Adaptive Histogram Modification Based Reversible Data Hiding Algorithm for Color Images

In this paper, we propose an improved adaptive histogram modification based reversible data hiding technique for color images. Reversible or Lossless data embedding is a technique that embeds data into an image in a reversible manner. In the conventional reversible technique, the visual quality is not taken into account which resulted in a poor quality of the embedded images. The histogram modification based reversible data hiding technique using causal window is proposed which predicts the embedding level with the help of the pixel value, edge value, just noticeable difference(JND) value. Using this data embedding level the data is embedded into the pixels. The pixel level adjustment considering the human visual system (HVS) characteristics is also made to reduce the distortion caused by data embedding This significantly improves the data embedding capacity(256x256x24bits) along with greater visual quality. The experimental results and performance comparison are presented to demonstrate the validity of the proposed algorithm. Keywords– Data hiding, human visual system, just noticeable difference, lossless watermarking.