A Reversible Data Hiding Approach in Medical Images Using Difference Expansion

The use of digital multimedia has become a promising way to protect sensitive information by hiding it within these media files. This technique, known as steganography, has gained popularity because digital images are readily available on public networks. However, current research in steganography faces a challenge: when a substantial amount of secret data is hidden within these images, it can lead to noticeable distortions in the image quality. This distortion makes most steganographic schemes not considered to be used for protecting sensitive data, such as the ones from medical applications. In this research, we present a new steganographic algorithm to optimize image quality after using it as a carrier of secret data. In our method, we use the spaces between the adjacent pixels to improve the imperceptibility of the image. The experimental results of our method show a significant improvement compared to the existing ones.