Reversible data hiding based on multilevel histogram modification and pixel value grouping

This paper proposes a multilevel histogram modification based reversible data hiding scheme using a new difference generation strategy called pixel value grouping (PVG). It aims to produce shaper difference histogram by exploiting the high correlation among pixels within block. After sorting, pixel values are grouped according to their distribution. For each set of similar pixel values, real or virtual reference pixel will be determined to compute differences in the scope of pixel values group and next secret message is embedded through expansion embedding. By PVG, we success to greatly reduce the number of to-be shifted pixels while producing sufficient EC and hence less distortion can be introduced for embedding the same payload. Moreover, the same grouping can be achieved at the decoder and the real or virtual reference pixel can be determined without any prior knowledge, which guarantees the reversibility. Experimental results demonstrate that our scheme outperforms previous related state-of-the-art schemes. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.