A reversible data hiding scheme in JPEG bitstreams using DCT coefficients truncation

Abstract

A reversible data hiding scheme in JPEG compressed bitstreams is proposed, which could avoid decoding failure and file expansion by means of removing of bitstreams corresponding to high frequency coefficients and embedding of secret data in file header as comment part. We decode original JPEG images to quantified 8×8 DCT blocks, and search for a high frequency as an optimal termination point, beyond which the coefficients are set to zero. These blocks are separated into two parts so that termination point in the latter part is slightly smaller to make the whole blocks available in substitution. Then spare space is reserved to insert secret data after comment marker so that data extraction is independent of recovery in receiver. Marked images can be displayed normally such that it is difficult to distinguish deviation by human eyes. Termination point is adaptive for variation in secret size. A secret size below 500 bits produces a negligible distortion and a PSNR of approximately 50 dB, while PSNR is also mostly larger than 30 dB for a secret size up to 25000 bits. The experimental results show that the proposed technique exhibits significant advantages in computational complexity and preservation of file size for small hiding capacity, compared to previous methods.