A High Quality Histogram Shifting Based Embedding Technique for Reversible Data Hiding

Reversible data hiding is a technique that embeds secret information into a host media without loss of host information. Ni et al.'s histogram shifting technique is a high-quality, reversible method for data embedding. However, their technique still suffers from undesirable distortion at low embedding rates and lack of a mechanism to control the stego-image quality, due to all pixels between the peak point and the minimum point have to be shifted one unit for data embedding. The proposed technique lowers the distortion performance at low embedding rates by scanning pixels from outer region toward the center of the host image, and chooses better locations for shifting histograms to embed data. The experimental results show that the proposed method significantly improves the quality of the stego image of histogram shifting technique, especially at low embedding rates.