Adaptive Multilayer Reversible Data Hiding using the Mean-to-Pixel Difference Modification

In this paper, we propose a new reversible image data hiding algorithm with high data embedding rate and low stego-image distortion. The proposed method is called as a multilayer algorithm. It can embed data in the image repeatedly in a non-overlapping block fashion. In the first layer, the image is divided into 2 x 2 blocks in a raster-scan order and at most 3 bits can be embedded in each block. In the second layer, the resulting stego-image from the first layer is also divided into 2 x 2 blocks in a raster-scan order from the second pixel to alleviate the stego-image distortion, and so on. Each layer has its threshold to control its data embedding rate. The threshold is adaptively adjusted according to the ratio of the size of the total data bitstream to the size of the already embedded bitstream. Our experimental results show the proposed method achieves good performance of high data embedding rate and high stego-image quality.