A reversible information hiding scheme using left–right and up–down chinese character representation

Techniques for text data hiding are different from image data hiding, video data hiding and audio data hiding. To break through the difficulty of text data hiding, Sun, Lou and Huang proposed a novel Chinese text data hiding scheme called the L-R scheme. In the L-R scheme, Sun et al. embedded secrets into Chinese characters that can be divided into left and right components. This paper describes how our proposed scheme extends the component concept to incorporate the up and down components of Chinese characters rather than the left and right components only, to significantly enhance hiding capacity. In addition, this paper adds a reversible function to Sun et al.’s L-R scheme to make it possible for receivers to obtain the original cover text and use it repeatedly for later transmission of secrets after the initial hidden secrets have been extracted. Finally, the extended scheme simplifies the extracting procedure and efficiently reduces the memory required on the receiver side during the secret extracting phase by using a new comparison method. Experimental results confirm the improved functions offered by the proposed scheme.