Review: Digital image steganography: Survey and analysis of current methods

Watermarking embeds information into a digital signal like audio, image, or video. Reversible image watermarking can restore the original image without any distortion after the hidden data is extracted. In this paper, we present a novel reversible watermarking scheme using an interpolation technique, which can embed a large amount of covert data into images with imperceptible modification. Different from previous watermarking schemes, we utilize the interpolation-error, the difference between interpolation value and corresponding pixel value, to embed bit ?1? or ?0? by expanding it additively or leaving it unchanged. Due to the slight modification of pixels, high image quality is preserved. Experimental results also demonstrate that the proposed scheme can provide greater payload capacity and higher image fidelity compared with other state-of-the-art schemes.

Reversible Image Watermarking Using Interpolation Technique

Recently, more and more attention is paid to reversible data hiding (RDH) in encrypted images, since it maintains the excellent property that the original cover can be losslessly recovered after embedded data is extracted while protecting the image content's confidentiality. All previous methods embed data by reversibly vacating room from the encrypted images, which may be subject to some errors on data extraction and/or image restoration. In this paper, we propose a novel method by reserving room before encryption with a traditional RDH algorithm, and thus it is easy for the data hider to reversibly embed data in the encrypted image. The proposed method can achieve real reversibility, that is, data extraction and image recovery are free of any error. Experiments show that this novel method can embed more than 10 times as large payloads for the same image quality as the previous methods, such as for PSNR=40 dB.

Reversible Data Hiding in Encrypted Images by Reserving Room Before Encryption

Reversible image hiding scheme using predictive coding and histogram shifting

Prediction-error expansion (PEE) is an important technique of reversible watermarking which can embed large payloads into digital images with low distortion. In this paper, the PEE technique is further investigated and an efficient reversible watermarking scheme is proposed, by incorporating in PEE two new strategies, namely, adaptive embedding and pixel selection. Unlike conventional PEE which embeds data uniformly, we propose to adaptively embed 1 or 2 bits into expandable pixel according to the local complexity. This avoids expanding pixels with large prediction-errors, and thus, it reduces embedding impact by decreasing the maximum modification to pixel values. Meanwhile, adaptive PEE allows very large payload in a single embedding pass, and it improves the capacity limit of conventional PEE. We also propose to select pixels of smooth area for data embedding and leave rough pixels unchanged. In this way, compared with conventional PEE, a more sharply distributed prediction-error histogram is obtained and a better visual quality of watermarked image is observed. With these improvements, our method outperforms conventional PEE. Its superiority over other state-of-the-art methods is also demonstrated experimentally.

Efficient Reversible Watermarking Based on Adaptive Prediction-Error Expansion and Pixel Selection

SVD-based digital image watermarking scheme

A color image watermarking scheme based on color quantization

In this paper, we present a new image authentication scheme to verify the contents of multi-resolution digital images The authentication message of a given image is generated based on the set partition in hierarchical trees (SPIHT) encoding When the original authentication message and the SPIHT decoded message of the image to be authenticated are compared, the given image can then be authenticated The size of the authentication message is adaptive and is determined according to the user requirement The experimental results show that the proposed scheme can distinguish acceptable operations from malicious manipulations Furthermore, the positions of tampered areas can be located accurately

Using set partitioning in hierarchical trees to authenticate digital images

An adaptive two-stage edge detection scheme for digital color images is proposed in this paper. In the first stage of this scheme, each three-dimensional color image is reduced to a one-dimensional gray-level image using the moment-preserving thresholding technique. Then, a new edge detection technique based on the block truncation coding scheme is introduced to detect the edge boundary in the second stage. The edge detection process makes use of the bit plane information of each BTC-encoded block to detect the edge boundary. The experimental results show that the performance of the detected edge image of the proposed scheme is as good as in Yang's scheme and in the Sobel operator. However, the computational cost consumed by the proposed scheme is less than that of Yang's scheme. In addition, the proposed scheme provides an adaptive edge quality decision mechanism. This mechanism can provide different edge images to meet various applications and the subjective evaluation. Moreover, this scheme locates the edge boundaries to the sub-pixel accuracy, which is an advantage to applications such as data hiding and image watermarking.

Piyu Tsai

Papers

Reversible image hiding scheme using predictive coding and histogram shifting

SVD-based digital image watermarking scheme

A color image watermarking scheme based on color quantization

Using set partitioning in hierarchical trees to authenticate digital images

An Adaptive Two-Stage Edge Detection Scheme for Digital Color Images