Reversible Data Hiding with a New Local Contrast Enhancement Approach

Eduardo Fragoso-Navarro, Manuel Cedillo-Hernandez, Francisco Garcia-Ugalde and Robert Morelos-Zaragoza
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Eduardo Fragoso-Navarro: Facultad de Ingenieria, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), Av. Universidad No. 3000, Ciudad Universitaria, Coyoacan, Mexico City 04510, Mexico
Manuel Cedillo-Hernandez: Instituto Politecnico Nacional (IPN), Escuela Superior de Ingenieria Mecanica y Electrica, Unidad Culhuacan, Av. Santa Ana No. 1000, San Francisco Culhuacan, Coyoacan, Mexico City 04430, Mexico
Francisco Garcia-Ugalde: Facultad de Ingenieria, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), Av. Universidad No. 3000, Ciudad Universitaria, Coyoacan, Mexico City 04510, Mexico
Robert Morelos-Zaragoza: College of Engineering, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192, USA

Mathematics, 2022, vol. 10, issue 5, 1-30

Abstract: Reversible data hiding schemes hide information into a digital image and simultaneously increase its contrast. The improvements of the different approaches aim to increase the capacity, contrast, and quality of the image. However, recent proposals contrast the image globally and lose local details since they use two common methodologies that may not contribute to obtaining better results. Firstly, to generate vacancies for hiding information, most schemes start with a preprocessing applied to the histogram that may introduce visual distortions and set the maximum hiding rate in advance. Secondly, just a few hiding ranges are selected in the histogram, which means that just limited contrast and capacity may be achieved. To solve these problems, in this paper, a novel approach without preprocessing performs an automatic selection of multiple hiding ranges into the histograms. The selection stage is based on an optimization process, and the iterative-based algorithm increases capacity at embedding execution. Results show that quality and capacity values overcome previous approaches. Additionally, visual results show how greyscale values are better differentiated in the image, revealing details globally and locally.

Keywords: contrast enhancement; histogram shifting; information security; image processing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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