Reversible data hiding scheme based on exploiting modification direction with two steganographic images

In this paper, we propose a novel data hiding scheme with reversibility based on exploiting modification direction (EMD). One cover image is first chosen and prepared to generate two visually similar steganographic images. During the secret embedding, the pixels in the first steganographic image are modified by no more than one gray level to embed secret data using the traditional EMD method, while the pixels in the second steganographic image are adaptively modified through referring to the first steganographic image without any confusions in image recovery process. On the receiver side, secret data can be extracted easily and the original cover image can also be recovered from the two steganographic images correctly. Experimental results demonstrate that our scheme can achieve high hiding capacity and satisfactory visual quality.