Protecting Data by Improving Quality of Stego Image based on Enhanced Reduced difference Expansion

Abstract

In this era of internet development, security of information sharing is the main problem faced by human being. Data hiding technique is one of the solutions. However, hiding credential information within a multimedia file such as image reduces its visual quality. Therefore, unauthorized users may suspect the existance of secret data within that image. In the past years, various data hiding algorithms have been developed by researchers to overcome the problem of high distortion of image after data embedding process. Achieving a high quality stego image, however, is still a challenging problem. In this paper, we proposed a new data hiding algorithm based on different expansion. It aims to enhance the quality of stego image for a given payload size. The new algorithm is evaluated on various medical images. Thereafter, the experimental results show that the visual quality is improved; and increasing the embedding capacity leads to more noises. Therefore, a better choice of base point and a reduced difference expansion affect the quality of stego image.

Personal data protection and liability of internet service provider: a comparative approach

“…By understanding the perfect cybersecurity may cannot be reached, therefore private companies should seek the optimal solution for their cybersecurity investment based on a company-by-company basis [34]. Even from the computer technic, the measures to protect data may still relevant employing the data hiding technique hides secret information within a multimedia file [35].…”

A Novel Reversible Data Hiding Algorithm Based on Enhanced Reduced Difference Expansion

“…However, they suffered a low embedding capacity for texture images. In the DE-based category, the attention of several researchers was attracted [14,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]. In 2003, Tian [14] proposed the first DE-based scheme.…”

“…However, by doing so, the original pixels will be twice changed for containing the secret data, causing much distortion in the stego-images. To overcome this shortcoming, several improved solutions were proposed in [20][21][22][23][24][25]. To further improve the performance of Alattar's scheme, Liu et al [20] proposed a novel DE-based RDH scheme by using a reduced difference expansion (RDE) algorithm.…”

“…Then, the histogram of these difference values is constructed for embedding the secret data by HS technique. According to the properties of 2 × 2 blocks, several RDE-based RDH schemes are proposed in [21][22][23][24]. In such schemes, different techniques are used to determine the suitable difference values for embedding data.…”

“…For the blocks belonging to the changeable group, the original difference values are directly modified to embed secret data by the DE algorithm. By applying the RDE technique, these RDE-based RDH schemes [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] achieved the better image quality of stego-images. However, they offered a low embedding capacity, because each pair of pixels is used to carry only one secret bit.…”