Weighted Matrix-Based Random Data Hiding Scheme Within a Pair of Interpolated Image

Abstract

Secure, high payload, reversible data hiding scheme with good visual quality is still an important research issue in data hiding and designing such a scheme is a technically challenging problem. Tseng et al. proposed a securely weighted matrix-based data hiding scheme for the binary image which can hide only two bits secret data within a $(3 \times 3)$ pixel block; meanwhile, Fan et al. suggested an improved weighted matrix-based data hiding scheme for grayscale image which can hide 4 bits secret data within a $(3 \times 3)$ pixel block. Both of these weighted matrix-based data hiding schemes performed only one modular sum of entry-wise multiplication operation between image block and weighted matrix. To improve the capacity along with visual quality, we have proposed an innovative, reversible, secure, high payload data embedding scheme in a random location of a pair of color image. The randomness has been achieved by using SHA-512 for selecting the image and PRNG is used to select the specific block of the desired image. The weighted matrix helps to embed the secret information by performing entry-wise multiplication with the image block. The embedding capacity has been increased by performing 16 repeated entry-wise multiplication operations and security has been enhanced by modification of the weighted matrix for each block. Finally, the experimental results are compared with existing state-of-the-art methods and observed that our scheme is superior in terms of capacity, quality, and security.