Chapter 2 - Lossless Information Hiding in Images on the Spatial Domain

Abstract

Unlike traditional information hiding techniques, the features of lossless information hiding techniques are: (1) by using the lossless embedding model, the secret information is embedded in digital media to achieve copyright protection or content authentication, and (2) after extracting the secret information, the digital media can be recovered losslessly to protect the integrity of the original digital media. These techniques therefore attract the interest of academicians and show broad application prospects in medical images and other sensitive applications. Lossless information hiding algorithms for images can be classified into three categories, i.e., the spatial domain–based, the transform domain–based, and the compressed domain–based schemes. This chapter focuses on the spatial domain schemes. First we provide an overview of the spatial domain–based schemes. Then we discuss some typical spatial domain lossless information hiding methods, which are classified into five categories, i.e., the modulo addition–based schemes, difference expansion–based schemes, histogram modification–based schemes, lossless compression–based schemes, and reversible secret sharing–based schemes.