Lossless data hiding method using error correction code

Recently, information hiding technique in image data has attracted attention as a countermeasure against illegal distribution, tampering and copyright infringement. In conventional information hiding, the image after the embedding (stego-image) is degraded. In application where image degradation is not tolerated, information hiding with reversible degradation is desired. Reversibility in this case is the ability to restore the original image from the strego-image. In this paper, we propose a method which can add reversibility to conventional method by using error correction code. Using computer simulations, we show that the proposed method is much better than conventional reversible information hiding techniques when the image underwent image tampering.