Reversible data hiding in encrypted image based on adaptive difference prediction and block subdivision

Abstract

Reversible Data Hiding in Encrypted Images (RDHEI) embeds information while protecting the content of images from being leaked, allowing users to decrypt image content, extract embedded information, and losslessly recover the original content based on the key types they possess. It is a recent hot research area at the intersection of information hiding and encrypted computation, aiming to ensure both data security and the ability to hide information within images. However, inadequate utilization of image blocks in RDHEI results in a low embedding capacity of additional data. For this reason, this paper proposes a RDHEI based on adaptive difference prediction and block subdivision. At first, divide the image into equally sized blocks, and these blocks are encrypted to conceal the content of the image. For data hider, using adaptive the most significant bit(MSB) prediction to classify the available and unavailable blocks. Based on adaptive MSB prediction(AMP), adaptive difference prediction(ADP) is used to subdivide the unavailable blocks to vacate more room for data embedding. When receiver receives the embedded encrypted image, the embedded data or image can be decrypted according to its own key possession. Experimental results show that the proposed method has a significant effect on improving the embedding capacity.