Data embedding for vector quantization image processing on the basis of adjoining state-codebook mapping

Information hiding for images is an important research issue in digital multimedia. It provides a way to certify copyrights of image files, as well as a means of secret communication for people. In this paper, we propose a reversible image information hiding scheme based on vector quantization (VQ). The proposed scheme uses a new technique called Adjoining State-Codebook Mapping (ASCM) to map the content of an image block to an index in the corresponding state-codebooks. The ASCM technique uses two adjacent image blocks of an encoding image block to create two state-codebooks, which can represent the encoding image block more accurately. Therefore, it can reduce the size of the output code-stream and yet still provide large embedding capacity for secret data. Experimental results indicate that the proposed scheme has better compression bit rate and larger embedding capacity when we compare the proposed scheme with recent similar studies, proposed by Chang et al. in 2009 and Yang et al. in 2011 respectively.