A counter-embedding IPVO based reversible data hiding technique
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A counter-embedding IPVO based reversible data hiding technique Kris Manohar 1 & The Duc Kieu 1 Received: 4 March 2020 / Revised: 17 August 2020 / Accepted: 22 September 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract
Improved pixel value ordering utilizes two embedding procedures. These are the maximum and minimum embedding procedures. The maximum embedding procedure modifies a pixel by either 0 or 1, while the minimum embedding procedure modifies a pixel by either 0 or − 1. Our counter-embedding strategy modifies a corner pixel using both embedding procedures. This strategy exploits the opposing distortions of each embedding procedure and can embed up to 2 secret bits into a single pixel. The proposed scheme consists of two stages. The first stage applies the counter-embedding strategy to two corner pixels of an input block. Thus, it can conceal up to four bits per block. However, this stage generates some auxiliary information which is embedded in the second stage using the traditional IPVO. The second stage minimizes distortions by only modifying pixels that the first stage ignored. Our experimental results confirm that the proposed scheme improves the visual quality of the recent related works. On average, for embedding capacities of 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, and 40,000 bits, it increases the visual quality by at least 1.2 dB. Keywords Pixel value ordering . PVO . Improved pixel value ordering . IPVO . Reversible data hiding . Steganography . Counter-embedding . Watermarking
1 Introduction The internet transmits enormous volumes of digital objects daily. The privacy and security of these transmissions are real concerns. To secure our communications, researchers have proposed cryptographic algorithms [4, 26]. A cryptographic algorithm generates cipher-texts
* The Duc Kieu [email protected]; [email protected] Kris Manohar [email protected]
1
Faculty of Science and Technology, Department of Computing and Information Technology, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago
Multimedia Tools and Applications
that are unrecognizable from their digital objects. No one can decode them without the secret key. Hence, we can use them to communicate over unsecured channels. However, ciphertexts’ unrecognizable form allows attackers to detect secure transmissions easily. After detection, they can monitor, intercept, and disrupt our sensitive communications. To combat this issue, researchers developed several data hiding (also called information hiding) algorithms [1–3, 5–25, 27–37]. Data hiding algorithms generate stego-objects by concealing secret messages within a cover-object (i.e., text, image, video, and audio). Imperceptibility is a vital characteristic of stego-objects. That is, they must be indistinguishable from their cover-object. Thus, by transmitting stego-objects, attackers cannot detect our secure communications easily. A reversible data hiding algorithm extracts the secret message and recovers the original cover-object. Recently, m
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