Reversible data hiding scheme for VQ indices based on modified locally adaptive coding and double-layer embedding strategy

•We propose a coding method using modified locally adaptive coding.•Double-layer embedding strategy is proposed to obtain a better embedding ability.•Experiments show our scheme has a better performance compared with other schemes.

In this paper, a new reversible data hiding scheme for vector quantization (VQ) compressed images is proposed. The proposed scheme utilizes the modified locally adaptive coding scheme which is initially made up with the codebook indices to guarantee that all VQ indices can be coded using the self-organized list L. Then the side match vector quantization (SMVQ) approach is used to improve the performance of locally adaptive coding scheme and a lossless coding method is brought into encode the positions at which the VQ indices appear in the list L. Finally a double-layer embedding strategy, which embeds the secret message into two layers that are the block type descriptor and the encoded position value, is proposed to obtain a better embedding ability. The experimental results demonstrate that our proposed scheme has a better performance in terms of compression rate, embedding payload and embedding efficiency compared with the related schemes.