A reversible data hiding scheme based on prediction-error expansion using pixel-based pixel value ordering predictor

Abstract

In this paper, a reversible data hiding (RDH) scheme based on prediction-error expansion (PEE) technique is proposed. PEE-based RDH methods exploit the correlations between neighboring pixels of the cover image to predict the pixel values and then embed data into the expanded prediction-errors. Traditional predictors exploit only the neighboring pixels and do not utilize the value of to be predicted pixel. Recently, Qu and Kim developed a pixel-based pixel value ordering (PPVO) predictor, which exploit the neighboring pixels as well as the pixel value itself, then the histogram shifting technique is applied to embed data. In the scheme proposed in this paper, the PPVO predictor is modified and a PEE-based RDH scheme is developed for data embedding. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme significantly outperforms some existing schemes in terms of the embedding capacity and visual quality.