3D PEE mapping based reversible data hiding for color images

The performance of prediction-error expansion (PEE) for reversible data hiding (RDH) is excellent. 2D and 3D PEE has a great improvement than the conventional PEE. However, the PEE-based method used in each channel of a color image cannot make full use of the correlation among three channels. In the paper, a reversible data hiding algorithm based on 3D PEE mapping is proposed. Firstly, a prediction-error triple is generated from three channels of a color image. Next, the prediction error triples can shift freely in 3D space. Finally, specific error triples have been shifted to embed secret data and other triples are expanded to make room for data embedding. By using the proposed reversible 3D PEE mapping, the inter-correlation of RGB channels is better exploited. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms the traditional RDH methods for color images.