An image interpolation based reversible data hiding scheme using pixel value adjusting feature

• Published in: Multimedia tools and applications Vol. 76; no. 11; pp. 13025 - 13046
• Main Authors: Malik, Aruna, Sikka, Geeta, Verma, Harsh Kumar
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.06.2017; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Complexity; Computation; Computer Communication Networks; Computer Science; Data Structures and Information Theory; Digital imaging; Image quality; Interpolation; Multimedia Information Systems; Performance enhancement; Pixels; Special Purpose and Application-Based Systems; Steganography; Reversible data hiding; Embedding capacity; Image interpolation
• ISSN: 1380-7501; 1573-7721
• DOI: 10.1007/s11042-016-3707-5

In this paper, we propose an image interpolation based reversible data hiding scheme using pixel value adjusting feature. This scheme consists of two phases, namely: image interpolation and data hiding. In order to interpolate the original image, we propose a new image interpolation method which is based on the existing neighbor mean interpolation method. Our interpolation method takes into account all the neighboring pixels like the NMI method. However, it uses different weight-age as per their proximity. Thus, it provides the better quality interpolated image. In case of data hiding phase, secret data is embedded in the interpolated pixels in two passes. In the first pass, it embeds the secret data into the odd valued pixels and then in the second pass, the even valued pixels are used to embed the secret data. To ensure the reversibility of the proposed scheme, the location map is constructed for every pass. Basically, the proposed scheme only increases/decreases the pixel values during data hiding phase, which improves the performance of the proposed scheme in terms of computation complexity. Experimentally, our scheme is superior to the existing scheme in terms of data hiding capacity, image quality and computation complexity.