A Fundamental Conception to Formulate Image Data Hiding Scheme Based on Error Diffusion

In this paper, we consider to formulate an image data hiding scheme based on error diffusion. By using the scheme, visual patterns are embedded in a halftone image without affecting its perceptual quality depending on a halftone key image. The scheme has the feature of visual cryptography with respect to extracting of the embedded patterns, i.e., when we print the two halftone images onto transparencies and stack them together, the embedded patterns are visible by human visual system without any special electronic calculation. We propose a formulation for the scheme in the view of a stochastic analysis. The idea is basic, but theoretical studies by formulating is important trial in this field. Keywords—Data hiding, Visual cryptography, Halftone image, Error diffusion, Probability theory.