High capacity reversible data hiding with interpolation and adaptive embedding

Abstract

A new Interpolation based Reversible Data Hiding (IRDH) scheme is reported in this paper. For different applications of an IRDH scheme to the digital image, video, multimedia, big-data and biological data, the embedding capacity requirement usually varies. Disregarding this important consideration, existing IRDH schemes do not offer a better embedding rate-distortion performance for varying size payloads. To attain this varying capacity requirement with our proposed adaptive embedding, we formulate a capacity control parameter and propose to utilize it to determine a minimum set of embeddable bits in a pixel. Additionally, we use a logical (or bit-wise) correlation between the embeddable pixel and estimated versions of an embedded pixel. Thereby, while a higher range between an upper and lower limit of the embedding capacity is maintained, a given capacity requirement within that limit is also attained with a better-embedded image quality. Computational modeling of all new processes of the scheme is presented, and performance of the scheme is evaluated with a set of popular test-images. Experimental results of our proposed scheme compared to the prominent IRDH schemes have recorded a significantly better-embedding rate-distortion performance.

Fig 1. A general framework of the proposed IRDH scheme.

Fig 2. Pixel arrangement for a parabolic interpolation (PI).

Fig 3. An example of directions in a block for SPI-based image up-sampling [15]: (a) horizontal, (b) vertical and (c) diagonal.

Fig 4. A minimal example of the proposed interpolation and embedding processes: (a) input image, (b) initial up-sampled image, (c) interpolated image, and (d) embedded image (the darker cells represent the original pixels).

Fig 5. An example of proposed embedding in an embeddable pixel.

Fig 6. Example of output images: (a) interpolated images, (b) embedded images for T = 6, (c) embedded images for T = 5, (d) embedded images for T = 4 and (e) embedded images for T = 3.

(Images in each row, from left: Boat, Goldhill and Peppers).

Fig 7. Embedding rate-distortion performance comparison of the proposed (without flag) scheme with our previous scheme (with flag) [15] for different values of T: (a) Bridge, (b) Baboon, (c) Barbara, (d) Boat, (e) Lena and (f) the average of all test-images.

Fig 8. The average performance comparison of the proposed scheme with other schemes for different values of T in terms of (a) bpp, (b) PSNR, and (c) SSIM.