World Applied Programming, Vol (2), Issue (6), June 2012.

373-376
ISSN: 2222-2510
2011 WAP journal. www.waprogramming.com

Spatial and Transform Domains RDH Methods

Masoud Nosrati *

Ronak Karimi

Hojat Allah Hasanvand

Dept of Computer Enginnering

Shaneh Branch,
Islamic Azad University,
Shaneh, Iran.
minibigs_m@yahoo.co.uk

Dept of Computer Engineering

Shaneh Branch,
Islamic Azad University,
Shaneh, Iran.
rk_respina_67@yahoo.com

Department of Graphic
Shaneh Branch,
Islamic Azad University,
Shaneh, Iran.
hasanvand_6@yahoo.com

Abstract: Reversible data hiding methods are a group of secure data embedding techniques that are widely
used in secure communication.
This study will have brief look at the most impressive RDH methods in recent researches. Due to this, these
methods are categorized to two different domains. They are spatial and transform domains.
Spatial domain methods that are investigated are: Lossless Compression and Encryption of Bit-Planes, Highcapacity distortion-free data embedding, Reversible data hiding by utilizing the minimum points of the
histogram.
Investigated transform domain techniques are: Distortionless image data hiding algorithm based on integer
wavelet transform, High Capacity RDH technique based on difference expansion, Integer DCT-based
Reversible Watermarking for Images Using Companding Technique, Lossless Generalized-LSB Data
Embedding.
Key word: Reversible data hiding, data hiding, data security, RHD, spatial domain, transform domain
I.

INTRODUCTION

Data hiding are a group of techniques used to put a se ure data in a host media (like images) with small deterioration in
host and the means to extract the secure data afterwards [1][2].
Reversible data hiding is a technique which enables images to contain data in a hidden form and then restored to their
origin by removing the digital hidden data and replacing the image data that had been overwritten.
The earliest reference of RDH was indicated in a patent authentication method that was suggested by Honsinger et al
[3], that utilizes modulo arithmetic but suffers from salt-and-pepper visual artifact. Afterwards, many RDH techniques
were proposed by different researchers. RDH methods are classified into two main categories by various data
embedding domains:

Embedding in the spatial domain

Coefficients in the transform domain

The second category of methods are all facing the same problem: how to choose appropriate embedding locations to
avoid pixel value overflow and underflow, and all the solutions have to pay the overhead cost to record all the
embedding locations, which greatly reduces the embedding capacity.
In this paper, we will have a survey on different researches in two types of reversible data hiding techniques. So, in the
second section, we will get into RDH techniques in spatial domain. Third section is dedicated to transform domain
techniques. Finally, conclusion is placed at the end.

II.

SPATIAL DOMAIN METHODS

In the field of spatial domain RDH, many methods can be referenced. But we will get into 3 methods that were
introduced by Fridrich et al. [4], M. Goljan et al. [5] and Zhicheng Ni et al. [6]. These methods are most impressible
than others.

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II.1. Lossless Compression and Encryption of Bit-Planes

Fridrich et al. propose this algorithm in [4]. Space to hide data is found by compressing proper bit-plane that offers
minimum redundancy to hold the hash (authentication information). Lowest bit-plane offering lossless compression
can be used unless the image is not noisy. In completely noisy image some bit-planes exhibit strong correlation. These
bit-planes can be used to find enough room to store the hash. Hash length is generally 128 bit using MD5 algorithm
[7]. The algorithm starts lossless compression from 5th bit-plane and calculates redundancy by subtracting compressed
data size from number of pixels. The authors use the JBIG lossless compression method [8] to compress the bit-planes.
During embedding the algorithm first calculates the hash of the original image, finds the proper bit plane, and adds the
hash with the compressed bit-plane data. Then it replaces selected bit-plane by concatenated data. For more security
the concatenated hash with compressed data is encrypted using symmetric key encryption based on 2-dimensional
chaotic maps [9]. This algorithm takes variable sized blocks and gives the encrypted message as long as the original
message, so no padding is needed. Other public or symmetric key algorithms can be used, but they require padding to
embed the encrypted message and hence increase distortion. During decoding after key bit-plane selection the data is
decrypted and hash is separated from the compressed original bit-plane data. The bit-plane is replaced by the
decompressed data; hence the exact copy of the original image is found. The hash of the reconstructed image is
calculated and compared with the extracted hash; if both are same the image in question is authentic [10]. The
advantages of this algorithm are (i) high capacity, (ii) security is equivalent to the security provided by cryptographic
authentication, and (iii) can be applied for the authentication purposes of JPEG files, complex multimedia objects,
audio files, digitized hologram, etc. The disadvantages are (i) noisy image forces the algorithm to embed information
in higher bit-plane when the distortions are higher and easily visible, (ii) single bit-plane in a small image does not
offer enough space to hide hash after compression, so two or more bit-planes are required and the artifacts must be
visible, and (iii) capacity is not high enough to embed large payload [10].

II.2. High-capacity distortion-free data embedding

One common drawback of virtually all current data embedding methods is the fact that the original image is inevitably
distorted by some small amount of noise due to data embedding itself. This distortion typically cannot be removed
completely due to quantization, bit-replacement, or truncation at the grayscales 0 and 255. Although the distortion is
often quite small, it may not be acceptable for medical imagery (for legal reasons) or for military images inspected
under unusual viewing conditions (after filtering or extreme zoom).
M. Goljan et al. introduce a general approach for high-capacity data embedding that is distortion-free (or lossless) in
the sense that after the embedded information is extracted from the stego-image. They can revert to the exact copy of
the original image before the embedding occurred.
Authors claim that the new method can be used as a powerful tool to achieve a variety of non-trivial tasks, including
distortion-free robust watermarking, distortion-free authentication using fragile watermarks, and steganalysis. The
proposed concepts are also extended to lossy image formats, such as the JPG [5].

II.3. Reversible data hiding by utilizing the minimum points of the histogram
Zhicheng Ni et al. [6] presented a novel reversible data hiding algorithm, which can recover the original image without
any distortion from the marked image after the hidden data have been extracted.
Proposed algorithm utilizes the zero or the minimum points of the histogram of an image and slightly modifies the
pixel grayscale values to embed data into the image. Authors claim that their method can embed more data than many
of the existing reversible data hiding algorithms. Also, they proved it analytically and indicated experimentally that the
peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of the marked image generated by this method versus the original image is
guaranteed to be above 48 dB. This lower bound of PSNR is much higher than that of all reversible data hiding
techniques reported in the literature.
The computational complexity of their proposed technique is low and the execution time is short.
Experimental results and performance comparison with other reversible data hiding schemes were presented to
demonstrate the validity of the proposed algorithm [6].

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III.

TRANSFORM DOMAIN METHODS

In this section 4 methods that are most impressible in transform domain are talked. They are proposed by:
G. Xuan et al. [11], J. Tian [12][13], B. Yang et al. [14], M. Celik et al. [15].

III.1. Distortionless image data hiding algorithm based on integer wavelet transform
G. Xuan et al. [11] proposed a distortionless image data hiding algorithm based on integer wavelet transform that can
invert the stego-image into the original image without any distortion after the hidden data are extracted. This algorithm
hides data into one (or more) middle bit-plane(s) of the integer wavelet transform coefficients in the middle and high
frequency sub bands.
It can embed much more data compared with the existing distortionless data hiding techniques and satisfy the
imperceptibility requirement. The image histogram modification is used to prevent grey scales from possible
overflowing. Experimental results have demonstrated the validity of the algorithm.

III.2. High Capacity RDH technique based on difference expansion

In [12][13] Tian propose a high quality reversible watermarking method with high capacity based on difference
expansion. Pixel differences are used to embed data; this is because of high redundancies among the neighboring pixel
values in natural images.
During embedding (i) differences of neighboring pixel values are calculated, (ii) changeable bits in that differences
are determined, (iii) some differences are chosen to be expandable by 1-bit, so changeable bits increases, (iii)
concatenated bit-stream of compressed original changeable bits, the location of expanded difference numbers (location
map), and the hash of original image (payload) is embedded into the changeable bits of difference numbers in a pseudo
random order, (iv) use the inverse transform to have the watermarked pixels from resultant differences.
During watermark extraction (i) differences of neighboring pixel values are calculated, (ii) changeable bits in that
differences are determined, (iii) extract the changeable bit-stream ordered by the same pseudo random order as
embedding, (iv) separate the compressed original changeable bit-stream, the compressed bit-stream of locations of
expanded difference numbers (location map), and the hash of original image (payload) from extracted bit-stream, (v)
decompress the compressed separated bit-streams and reconstruct the original image replacing the changeable bits, (vi)
calculate the hash of reconstructed image and compare with extracted hash.
The advantages are (i) no loss of data due to compression-decompression, (ii) also applicable to audio and video
data, and (iii) encryption of compressed location map and changeable bit-stream of different numbers increases the
security.
The disadvantages include (i) there may be some round off errors (division by 2), though very little, (ii) largely
depends on the smoothness of natural image; so cannot be applied to textured image where the capacity will be zero or
very low, and (iii) there is significant degradation of visual quality due to bit-replacements of gray scale pixels [2][10].

III.3. Integer DCT-based Reversible Watermarking for Images Using Companding Technique
B. Yang et al. [14] present a high capacity reversible watermarking scheme using companding technique over integer
DCT coefficients of image blocks. This scheme takes advantage of integer DCT coefficients Laplacian-shape-like
distribution, which permits low distortion between the watermarked image and the original one caused by the bit-shift
operations of the companding technique in the embedding process.
In proposed scheme, B. Yang et al. choose AC coefficients in the integer DCT domain for the bit-shift operation, and
therefore the capacity and the quality of the watermarked image can be adjusted by selecting different numbers of
coefficients of different frequencies. To prevent overflows and underflows in the spatial domain caused by
modification of the DCT coefficients, they design a block discrimination structure to find suitable blocks that can be
used for embedding without overflow or underflow problems.
They also use this block discrimination structure to embed an overhead of location information of all blocks suitable
for embedding. With this scheme, watermark bits can be embedded in the saved LSBs of coefficient blocks, and
retrieved correctly during extraction, while the original image can be restored perfectly.

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III.4. Lossless generalized-LSB data embedding

M. Celik et al. [15] present a novel lossless (reversible) data-embedding technique, which enables the exact recovery
of the original host signal upon extraction of the embedded information. A generalization of the well-known least
significant bit (LSB) modification is proposed as the data-embedding method, which introduces additional operating
points on the capacity-distortion curve. Lossless recovery of the original is achieved by compressing portions of the
signal that are susceptible to embedding distortion and transmitting these compressed descriptions as a part of the
embedded payload. A prediction-based conditional entropy coder that utilizes unaltered portions of the host signal as
side-information improves the compression efficiency and, thus, the lossless data-embedding capacity.

IV.

CONCLUSION

In this paper, we got into different impressive reversible data hiding methods in recent studies. They were categorized
and investigated in spatial and transform domains.
Investigated spatial domain methods are: Lossless Compression and Encryption of Bit-Planes by Fridrich et al., Highcapacity distortion-free data embedding by M. Goljan et al., Reversible data hiding by utilizing the minimum points of
the histogram Zhicheng Ni et al.
Investigated transform domain techniques are: Distortionless image data hiding algorithm based on integer wavelet
transform by G. Xuan et al., High Capacity RDH technique based on difference expansion by Tian et al., Integer DCTbased Reversible Watermarking for Images Using Companding Technique by B. Yang et al., and Lossless
generalized-LSB data embedding by M. Celik et al.

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