A novel embedding technique for lossless data hiding in medical images employing histogram shifting method

Abstract

In this paper, a lossless data hiding method based on histogram shifting for MR images using Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) are presented. In this method, the algorithms are validated to hide the data in wavelet coefficients of high frequency subbands. This scheme has the advantage of comparing the DCT coefficients and the DWT coefficients which permit low distortion between the watermarked image and the original image. It also shifts a part of the histogram of high frequency subbands and embeds the data by using the created histogram zero point. To prevent the overflows and underflows in the spatial domain, caused by the modification of the DCT coefficients and the DWT coefficients, the histogram modification technique is applied. Therefore, we present a validated method to evaluate and compare the performance of DWT and DCT on task, in terms of data embedding payload and the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) in the medical image. A careful experimental analysis validates the method showing its superiority over the existing methods.