Effective Dual-images based Reversible Information Hiding Scheme based on Complexity Analysis and Thresholds Controlling

Abstract

Information hiding is a method that can effectively transmit secret messages on the Internet or mobile environment. Among all kinds of information hiding methods, dual-images reversible information hiding technology has been paid a lot of attention recently because it has better image quality and embedding capacity and realizes the concept of secret sharing. Lu et al. proposed a block folding based reversible dual-images hiding scheme in 2017. They split the secret information into two sections and encode them into smaller digits to improve the quality of the camouflage image. However, this method requires an additional pixel to record section numbers, that will limit the amount of information stored. This study considers the complexity of the block to analysis how many bits can be concealed in the pixel to solve the problem. Two thresholds are used to control the image quality. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme indeed improves the hiding performance.