Implementation of Block-Based Hierarchical Prediction for Developing an Error-Propagation-Free Reversible Data Hiding Scheme

Abstract

This paper proposes a reversible data hiding technique based on the residual histogram shifting technique. To improve the hiding capacity, this study proposes a multiple-round hierarchical prediction mechanism that generates the prediction errors of each image block. The prediction errors of each block are collected to produce the residual histogram and the secret data are then embedded into the residual histogram to obtain the embedded image. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed technique not only provides good hiding capacity, but also maintains good image quality of the embedded image. In addition, this technique can be easily extended for image integrity protection as it is capable of resisting error propagation.