Partial reversible data hiding scheme using (7, 4) hamming code

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a partial reversible data hiding scheme using (7,4) Hamming code (PRDHHC) with secret position (κ). In this scheme, we partition the original cover image into (7 × 7) pixel block and adjust redundant LSB bits of each row using odd parity. Then we calculate secret position κ = (δ mod 7) + 1, where δ is a shared secret key. The bit at position κ and a suitable location for hidden message bit is modified through error creation caused by tamper in each row of the selected block. For the next row, the κ is updated by the data embedding position (ω) of the previous row. We repeat this process to embed secret message bits within the selected block. For each new block, the κ is updated by κ _i+1 = (κ _i × δ × ω) mod 7 + 1, where i = 0, 1, 2, 3, . . . , number of blocks. At the receiver end, we complement the bit at position κ then retrieve the secret message bit by applying Hamming error correcting code. The extraction process will be stopped when we find continuous no error within stego image. The propose PRDHHC scheme extract the hidden message successfully and recover hamming adjusted cover image by complement bits at both the κ and ω positions but can not recover original cover image, that is to say, our scheme is partial reversible. Finally, we compared our scheme with other state-of-the-art methods and obtained reasonably better performance in terms of visual quality (measured by PSNR). Also we analyze our generated stego image using some steganalysis techniques which give promising results.