Reversible data hiding for high quality images using modification of prediction errors

In this paper, a reversible data hiding scheme based on modification of prediction errors (MPE) is proposed. For the existing histogram-shifting based reversible data hiding techniques, though the distortion caused by embedding is low, the embedding capacity is limited by the frequency of the most frequent pixel. To remedy this problem, the proposed method modifies the histogram of prediction errors to prepare vacant positions for data embedding. The PSNR of the stego image produced by MPE is guaranteed to be above 48 dB, while the embedding capacity is, on average, almost five times higher than that of the well-known Ni et al. techniques with the same PSNR. Besides, MPE not only has the capability to control the capacity-PSNR, where fewer data bits need less error modification, but also can be applied to images with flat histogram. Experimental results indicate that MPE, which innovatively exploits the modification of prediction errors, outperforms the prior works not only in terms of larger payload, but also in terms of stego image quality. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.