Reversible data hiding based on histogram modification of prediction-error

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This work presents a novel histogram-based reversible data hiding scheme. Although common histogram-based reversible data hiding schemes can achieve high image quality, embedding capacity is restricted because general images usually do not contain a great number of pixels with the same pixel values. To improve embedding capacity and retain low distortion, the proposed scheme uses prediction-error values, which are derived from the difference between an original image and a predictive image, instead of using the original pixels to convey a secret message. In the proposed scheme, a predictive image is generated using the mean interpolation prediction method. Since the obtained predictive image is very similar to the original image, prediction-error values are to be tended to zero. That is, a great quantity of peak points gathers around zero. The proposed scheme takes full advantage of this property to increase embedding capacity and retain slight distortion. Moreover, a threshold is used to balance the tradeoff between embedding capacity and image quality, i.e. embedding capacity in the proposed scheme is scalable. Furthermore, only a threshold is needed to record, not a large amount of information of peak and zero points, when high embedding capacity is required. Additionally, a multilevel mechanism is employed to further increase embedding capacity. Experimental results indicate that the proposed scheme is superior to other reversible schemes in terms of both image quality and embedding capacity.