Reversible Data Hiding Based on Pixel-Value-Ordering and Prediction-Error Triplet Expansion

Pixel value ordering and prediction error expansion (PVO+PEE) is a very successful reversible data hiding (RDH) scheme. A series of studies were proposed to improve the performance of the PVO-based scheme. However, the embedding capacity of those schemes is quite limited. We propose a two-step prediction-error-triplet expansion RDH scheme based on PVO. A three-dimensional state transition map for the prediction-error triplet is also proposed to guide the embedding of the two-step scheme. By properly designing the state transitions, the proposed scheme can embed secret data or expand without embedding by modifying just a single entry of the triplet. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme significantly enlarges the embedding capacity of the PVO-based scheme and further reduces the distortion due to embedding.