An improved human visual system based reversible data hiding method using adaptive histogram modification

Jung et al., IEEE Signal Processing Letters, 18, 2, 95, 2011 proposed a reversible data hiding method considering the human visual system (HVS). They employed the mean of visited neighboring pixels to predict the current pixel value, and estimated the just noticeable difference (JND) of the current pixel. Message bits are then embedded by adjusting the embedding level according to the calculated JND. Jung et al.'s method achieved excellent image quality. However, the embedding algorithm they used may result in over modification of pixel values and a large location map, which may deteriorate the image quality and decrease the pure payload. The proposed method exploits the nearest neighboring pixels to predict the visited pixel value and to estimate the corresponding JND. The cover pixels are preprocessed adaptively to reduce the size of the location map. We also employ an embedding level selection mechanism to prevent near-saturated pixels from being over modified. Experimental results show that the image quality of the proposed method is higher than that of Jung et al.'s method, and the payload can also be increased due to the reduction of the location map.