Athena: capacity enhancement of reversible data hiding with consideration of the adaptive embedding level

This article provides a novel method of reversible data hiding (RDH) by adaptively adjusting the embedding level to achieve minimal distortion and to attain the embedded data confidentiality via data reversion key generation. The peak point queue (PPQ) is used to adaptively determine the embedding level and achieve superior quality in the marked image. In respect to data reversion key for the double protection, our approach, named Athena, makes better utilization of the overhead information and allows users to exchange the key based on a public key infrastructure (PKI). Our experimental results show that the method is capable of providing a better quality image for a range of different test images of various sizes.