High-capacity separable reversible data-Hiding method in encrypted images based on block-level encryption and Huffman compression coding

Abstract

Reversible data hiding in encrypted images (RDHEI) is a technology that embeds data directly in the encrypted images without decryption or knowledge of the content of the images. However, it is difficult to vacate room from the encrypted image. This problem limits the embedding capacity of the existing RDHEI methods. In this paper, we propose a new RDHEI method designed to supply large embedding capacity without pre-processing of the original images. Using a block-level encryption scheme, the proposed method partially retains the spatial correlation in the high bit-planes of the encrypted image, while the content of the image is held securely. The data hider can compress the high bit-planes of the encrypted image to vacate high-capacity room using Huffman compression coding. In addition, image recovery and data extraction are separable and error-free at the receiver side. The receiver can retrieve the lossless original image without the embedded data using only an encryption key or by extracting the secret data directly from the encrypted image without decryption using only the data-hiding key. The experimental results and comparison proved that the proposed method performs better than previous methods in terms of embedding capacity and visual quality.