Enhanced AMBTC based data hiding method using hamming distance and pixel value differencing

In this paper, we propose a new Absolute Moment Block Truncation Coding (AMBTC) based data hiding scheme using hamming distance and pixel value differencing methods. The proposed method firstly preprocesses the original image using a smoothing filter so that its quality can be maintained after AMBTC compression. It then applies AMBTC compression on the processed image and uses two thresholds to categorize the image blocks into three categories namely Smooth, Less_Complex, and Highly_Complex blocks so that the complex block can also be used to embed the secret data. The secret data is then embedded into the smooth blocks using simple replacement strategy. Further, the proposed method embeds 8 bits of secret data into the bit plane of Less_Complex blocks using hamming distance calculation and few bits into the quantization levels of Highly_Complex blocks using pixel value differencing (PVD) method to increase the data hiding capacity without having any major impact on image quality. Thus, the proposed method additionally embeds on average 6 more bits in complex blocks. Experimental results also prove that the proposed method is superior to the contemporary AMBTC based data hiding methods in term of data hiding capacity and has comparable image quality. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.