A high capacity data hiding scheme for binary images based on block patterns

•The scheme proposes block patterns for a 2 × 2 block to enforce specific block-based relationship.•The best and worst hiding capacities of our scheme are higher than four existing schemes.•Two kinds of matching pair (MP) methods, internal adjustment MP and external adjustment MP decrease the embedding changes.

This paper proposes a high capacity data hiding scheme for binary images based on block patterns, which can facilitate the authentication and annotation of scanned images. The scheme proposes block patterns for a 2 × 2 block to enforce specific block-based relationship in order to embed a significant amount of data without causing noticeable artifacts. In addition, two kinds of matching pair (MP) methods, internal adjustment MP and external adjustment MP, are designed to decrease the embedding changes. Shuffling is applied before embedding to reduce the distortion and improve the security. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme gives a significantly improved embedding capacity than previous approaches in the same level of embedding distortion. We also analyze the perceptual impact and discuss the robustness and security issues.