Multilevel lossless data hiding using multi-peak based on pixel differences histogram

To date a couple of lossless data hiding methods have been developed. However, the pure payload is still a little low in those proposed schemes. To solve this problem, a lossless data hiding method based on pixel differences histogram for multilevel embedding is proposed in the paper, which utilizes multiple pairs of peak points to embed more data, and also alternates the scan order to achieve the higher embedding capacity in every embedding layer. Our experimental results show that the proposed scheme has higher PSNR and high pure payload than that of other methods being considered in the paper. Besides, the output image visual quality lies within the acceptable range.