Reversible Steganographic Method Using Complexity Control and Human Visual System

Recently, Luo et al. proposed a new block-based reversible data hiding method that divides an image into blocks, sorts all pixels within a block and then chooses the middle sorted pixel as a basic-point. To maintain the same basic-point before and after embedding, Luo et al.'s method classifies blocks into four types and adopts four different strategies, respectively, to embed a secret message. In this paper, we propose a new method which relies on only one strategy to reach the same effectiveness. The proposed method includes a complexity controlled mechanism to filter blocks that are not suitable for hiding the secret message. High image quality is thereby retained. Based on just-noticeable difference mechanism, the proposed scheme also estimates allowable changes such that the stego-image is able to meet the human visual system. Experimental results showed that the proposed method allows more payload and higher image quality than the method of Luo et al. and other related methods.