An Iterative Method for Lossless Data Embedding in BMP Images

An iterative method for designing efficient, simple and high-capacity lossless embedding method for BMP images with a 256-color grayscale palette is presented. The proposed method is based on a palette modification scheme, which can iteratively embed message bits into pixels with the most occurrence gray value in a BMP image. In each iteration, both the overhead of removing an entry color in the palette and the benefit of copying another entry color to replace it are calculated. If the maximal benefit exceeds the minimal overhead, an entry color is replaced. Experimental results and performance comparison with other lossless data hiding schemes are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.