Measure-Independent Characterization of Contrast Optimal Visual Cryptography Schemes

The contrast in visual cryptography has received a lot of attention. It has been studied using three different measures. In this paper we follow a measure-independent approach, which, by using the structural properties of the schemes, enables us to provide a characterization of optimal schemes that is independent of the specific measure used to assess the contrast. In particular we characterize and provide constructions of optimal schemes for the cases of \((2,n)\)-threshold and \((n,n)\)-threshold schemes. Then, we apply the measure-independent results to the three measures that have been used in the literature obtaining both new characterizations and constructions of optimal schemes and alternative proofs of known results.

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