An information hiding scheme with minimal image distortion

This paper proposes an embedding scheme which can embed a message into an image and obtain minimal image distortion for applications which need a high-visual-quality stego-image. The message to be embedded is divided into sub-messages each of which is embedded into a pixel vector with three pixels. A sub-message is extracted from a stego-pixel vector by calculating the differences between pixels. The embedding capacity of an image using the proposed scheme can be more than one bit per pixel and the modification of a pixel is not more than one. Since the modification of pixels is minimal, applications using the proposed scheme can obtain a stego-image with higher visual quality than existing studies.

Research highlights► An information hiding scheme with minimal image distortion is proposed. ► A cover image is divided into disjoint vectors of three pixels. ► A sub-message is embedded by adjusting the differences between pixels. ► The embedding capacity can be more than one bit per pixel. ► The modification of a pixel value is not more than one.