Reversible data-hiding for progressive image transmission

Current progressive image transmission (PIT) systems can not control both bit rate and resolution constraints in images. Due to the partially localised nature of the wavelet transform, the value of any pixel in the image depends on only a small number of wavelet coefficients. Thus, it is possible to specify an arbitrary region of the image and prevent that region from being badly degraded during the compression process. This can be done by representing coefficients corresponding to those regions in the wavelet space more accurately. This is accomplished by multiplying those values by an arbitrary factor before applying the embedded zerotree wavelets (EZW) coding technique. The EZW algorithm is then effectively applied to, wavelet coefficients to refine and encode the most significant ones in the wavelet space. The information of the image is thus transmitted in several successive stages. It is shown that in a PIT system not only any region of interest (ROI) can be sent and received progressively, but also bitrate and resolution constraints can be controlled simultaneously. This option becomes very effective in interactive communication channels where the available bandwidth is at a premium.

Reversible Data Hiding (RDH) should be secured as per requirements to protect content in open environments such as the cloud and internet. Integrity and undetectability of steganographic images are amongst the main concerns in any RDH scheme. As steganographic encryption using linear prediction over bit-planes is challenging, so the security and embedding capacity of the existing RDH techniques could not be adequate. Therefore, a new steganographic technique is proposed which provides better security, higher embedding capacity and visual quality to the RDH scheme. In this technique, the cover image is divided into n-bit planes (nBPs) and linear prediction is applied to it. Next, the histogram of the residual nBPs image is taken, and secret data bits are encrypted using the RC4 cryptographic algorithm. To embed the encrypted secret data bits, the histogram shifting process is applied. This is achieved by using peak and zero pairs of residual nBPs images. This scheme provides security to the cover image and hidden data. The proposed RDH scheme is capable of extracting the embedded secret data accurately and recovering the original cover or residual nBPs image.

Pyramid data structures have played an important role in progressive image transmission. Over the years, the reduced difference pyramid (RDP) has been found to be one of the best data structure. The RDP takes the differences between the neighboring nodes at the same level. The new modified difference pyramid (MDP) data structure, developed in this paper, takes the differences between successive levels. Simulation results show that both the bit rate and the complexity of the receiver for the MDP structure are lower than those for the RDP structure at the same quality. An MDP coding process which incorporates a prefilter is also proposed in this paper. Simulation results show it can provide good quality (in a subjective sense) reconstructed images at a lower bit rate than the unfiltered scheme can. Also, acceptable intermediate images are interpolated via the repetition method and via the cubic convolution method to get images which are the same size as the original. Results are compared.

With the extensive use of cloud services in different applications, it's a problem for the cloud service provider to manage or process the privacy data that are encrypted by the content owner. Therefore, signal processing technology in the encrypted domain has attracted the attention of researchers. In this paper, we propose a new reversible data hiding method for encrypted images based on two-phase histogram shifting. In the proposed method, the original image is encrypted by using special image division and additive homomorphic encryption. After image encryption, the encrypted image can partially maintain spatial correlation for data embedding while the content security of the encrypted image is ensured. Due to the spatial correlation, the data hider can generate two difference histograms from the encrypted image, which provide high embedding capacity. A two-phase histogram shift scheme is used to embed the secret data into the two difference histograms. At the receiver side, the secret data can be extracted from the encrypted image or the decrypted image, and the image can be recovered to its original version without any error. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method can efficiently improve the capacity of data embedding and outperform other related methods, while the visual quality of the marked image can be maintained.

A new vector quantization technique, called storage- and entropy-constrained multi-stage vector quantization (SECMSVQ) technique, is presented for progressive image transmission (PIT) applications. In the SECMSVQ technique, the rate constraint at each stage of the vector quantizer (VQ), and the storage size of the whole VQ are specified independently before the design. A dynamic programming technique is then used to allocate the storage size to each stage of the VQ optimally so that the quantization distortion of the VQ is minimized. The SECMSVQ is well-suited to constructing a PIT system where the transmission time and storage size are the major concerns. Moreover, simulation results show that the SECMSVQ technique can be used effectively to implement signal compression systems under the storage and rate constraints.

In this paper a new developed algorithm for compression of still images based on 2D-SOFM NN's in correspondence with the method of Inverse Difference Pyramid (IDP) decomposition is represented. The new developed algorithm is well suited to be used in Progressive Image Transmission (PIT). Advantage of the method relies on the learning process and adaptation capability of NN's to reduce the matrices computation complexity and the total number of pyramid levels required for PIT. In addition to, for image reconstruction no interpolation is needed anymore, which improves the quality of the reconstructed image.

Few networks offer sufficient bandwidth for the transmission of high resolution two- and three-dimensional medical image sets without incurring significant latency. Traditional compression methods achieve bit-rate reduction based on pixel statistics and ignore visual cues that are important in identifying visually informative regions. This paper describes an approach to managing image transmission in which spatial regions are selected and prioritized for transmission so that visually informative data is received in a timely manner. This context-based image transmission (CBIT) scheme is a lossless form of progressive image transmission (PIT) in which gross structure, represented by an approximate iconic image, is transmitted first. Each part of this iconic image is progressively updated, using a simple set of rules that take into account viewing requirements. CBIT is realized using knowledge about image composition to segment, label, prioritize, and fit geometric models to regions of an image. Tests, using neurological images, show that, with CBIT, a valuable transmitted image is received with a latency that is about one-tenth that of traditional PIT schemes. Frequently, the necessary regions of the image are transmitted in about half the time taken to transmit the full image.

The increasing demand for underwater robotic intervention systems around the world in several application domains requires more versatile and inexpensive systems. By using a wireless communication system, supervised semi-autonomous robots have freedom of movement and, at the same time, allows the operator to get camera feedback and supervise the intervention. Moreover, the limited and varying bandwidth of underwater radio frequency (RF) and underwater acoustic modem channels is a major obstacle. This paper proposes the use of progressive (embedded) image compression and region of interest (ROI) for the design of an underwater image sensor to be installed in an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, specially when there are constraints on the available bandwidth, allowing a more agile data exchange between the vehicle and a human operator supervising the underwater intervention.

In the paper “Robust reversible data hiding scheme based on two-layer embedding strategy” published in INS recently, Kumar et al. proposed a robust reversible data hiding (RRDH) scheme based on two-layer embedding. Secret data was embedded into the most significant bit-planes to increase robustness, and a sorting strategy based on local complexity was adopted to reduce distortion. However, Kumar’s reversible data hiding (RDH) scheme is not as robust against joint photographic experts group (JPEG) compression as stated and can not be called RRDH. This comment first gives a brief description of their RDH scheme, then analyzes their scheme’s robustness from the perspective of JPEG compression principles. JPEG compression will change pixel values, thereby destroying auxiliary information and pixel value ordering required to extract secret data correctly, making their scheme not robust. Finally, the changes in both bit-plane and pixel value ordering after JPEG compression are shown and analyzed by different robustness-testing experiments.

Recently, a reversible data hiding (RDH) scheme based on code division multiplexing (CDM) has been reported, in which secret information and pseudo bits are transformed into spreading sequences. Most sequences may be mutually offset when they are repeatedly embedded, which leads to image quality and embedding capacity improvement. Despite of these advantages, the pseudo bits may cause the image distortion, especially in the low embedding rates. Moreover, it is hard to protect image content when the image is uploaded to cloud server. In order to solve these problems, we propose an RDH scheme based on CDM in multiple encrypted images (RDHMEI) with public key cryptography. The proposed method first encrypted the image using the Paillier homomorphic encryption. Afterwards, the encrypted pixels that have a same coordinate in the multiple images are selected as the elements of the embedding vector. Instead of traditional dual-images based RDH, the proposed method can embed additional bits into the embedding vector while the pixel correlation disappears after encrypting. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed method.

Reversible data hiding (RDH) can be used to imperceptibly embed data into images in a reversible manner. Many RDH schemes have been developed for uncompressed images. However, JPEG compressed images are more widely used in our daily lives. The existing RDH techniques for JPEG images may cause significant distortion or a large increase in the file size of marked images. In this paper, a novel RDH scheme for JPEG images is proposed. First, the negative influence models of data embedding, including image visual distortion model and file size change model, are mathematically established. Then, a negative index for each frequency is defined as the weighted sum of the normalized average image visual distortion and the normalized average file size change per 1-bit hidden data, and the frequencies with small negative indices will be used for data embedding with a high priority. The weighting factor can be adjusted according to the user’s preference for less image distortion or smaller file size. Lastly, secret data is embedded into non-zero quantized AC coefficients of the selected frequencies in ascending order of zero-run length. Extensive experiments conducted on typical images and a well-known image database show that the presented negative influence models are effective, and the proposed RDH scheme based on the models can achieve low image distortion and small increase in the file size of marked images.

Fault-tolerant and progressive transmission of images

Reversible data hiding (RDH) is an active research area in the field of information security. The RDH scheme allows the transmission of a secret message by embedding it into a cover image, and the receiver can recover the original cover image along with the extraction of the secret message. In this paper, we propose a bit plane compression based RDH scheme to hide a sequence of secret message bits into a grayscale image. In the proposed method, a selected bit plane of the cover image will be compressed using run-length encoding (RLE) scheme. Further, the RLE sequence has been efficiently encoded as a binary sequence using Elias gamma encoding method. The Elias gamma encoded bit sequence concatenated with the secret message bits are used to replace the selected bit plane after performing a sequence of Arnold transform. The Arnold transform helps to find a new scrambled version of the bit plane which is very close to the original bit plane to ensure the visual quality of the stego image. The RLE is a lossless compression technique, therefore recovery of the original image is possible by the receiver. The experimental study of the proposed scheme on the images from standard image dataset (USC-SIPI image dataset) shows that the proposed scheme outperforms the existing scheme in terms of the visual quality of the stego image without compromising the data embedding rate.

High-performance reversible data hiding based on ridge regression prediction algorithm

We present a JAVA-based Interactive Progressive Local Image Transmission (IPLIT) system for viewing large images over the bandwidth-limited World Wide Web (WWW) in (i.e. usable) time . One motivation behind this research is the need for medical specialists to remotely view medical images, in reasonable time, over the WWW.In our IPLIT system, the user employs a JAVA-enabled Internet browser to view and browse a low resolution image. The identification of features or regions of interest before observing those regions in detail is performed by either selecting a particular region manually via mouse or by utilizing an automatic feature-detection mode. The automatic feature-detection displays high-resolution subimages along a trajectory determined by the user-specified feature ofinterest. Our program handles 3D image data as a sequence of 2D images. Our IPLIT system is tested on actual MIII, CT and Ultrasound medical images obtained from the Robarts Research Institute at the University of Western