Steganography-Enhanced Prediction-Error Expansion: A Novel Reversible Data Hiding Framework

Prediction-error expansion (PEE) is the most efficient approach in reversible data hiding (RDH). However, in PEE, to ensure the reversibility, significant distortion is introduced since many pixels are shifted without embedded data. Based on this consideration, a novel double-layered RDH framework called S+PEE is proposed in this paper. Unlike the conventional PEE, by S+PEE, shifted pixels can also be utilized for carrying secret data. The secret data is embedded in the first embedding layer with steganography and a specifically designed PEE-like mechanism. Then, to ensure the reversibility, the irreversible modifications introduced by the first embedding layer are recorded and embedded in the second embedding layer. Moreover, the corresponding capacity-distortion model is established to minimize the embedding impact, so that the marked image quality can be optimized. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can provide high marked image quality, and it outperforms some state-of-the-art methods.