Multilevel reversible data hiding based on histogram modification of difference images

Reversible data hiding has drawn considerable attention in recent years. Reversibility allows original media to be completely recovered from marked media without distortion after embedded message has been extracted. In this paper we propose a multilevel reversible data hiding scheme based on the difference image histogram modification that uses the peak point to hide messages. Through a joint imperceptibility, and hiding capacity evaluation, we show that our proposed scheme uses a multilevel hiding strategy to achieve large hiding capacity and keep distortion low. Performance comparisons with other existing reversible hiding schemes are provided to demonstrate the validity of our proposed scheme. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.