Multi-Level Dual Pixel Value Ordering based High-Capacity Reversible Data Hiding

We introduce a high-capacity Reversible Data Hiding (RDH) scheme with multi-level dual Pixel Value Ordering (DPVO) approach. The DPVO process operates in two phases: forward and backward. While conventional PVO-based embedding is applied to image blocks in the forward phase, the backward phase’s refined embedding uses maximum and minimum pixel sets to apply PVO with PEE selectively, allowing partial restoration of original pixel values. By employing the DPVO approach over the image blocks in horizontal and vertical directions in the successive levels, we exploit the inherent pixel correlations within images, substantially enhancing the data embedding capacity with highly maintained image quality. The proposed scheme demonstrates competitive image quality at low embedding rates and excels in achieving significantly high capacity with minimal quality loss, making it ideal for applications requiring high-capacity data embedding like metadata embedding, digital watermarking, and electronic records, etc., where maintaining image fidelity is also crucial.