Abstract:

With the increasing use of cloud backup methods for storing important files, the demand for privacy protection has also grown.Reversible data hiding in encrypted images (RDHEI) is an important technology in the field of information security that allows embedding secret information in encrypted images while ensuring error-free extraction of the secret information and lossless recovery of the original plaintext image.This technology not only enhances image security but also enables efficient transmission of sensitive information over networks.Its application in cloud environments for user privacy protection has attracted significant attention from researchers.A reversible data hiding method in encrypted images based on prediction error and bitplane coding was proposed to improve the embedding rate of existing RDHEI algorithms.Different encoding methods were employed by the algorithm depending on the distribution of the bitplanes, resulting in the creation of additional space in the image.The image was rearranged to allocate the freed-up space to the lower-order planes.Following this, a random matrix was generated using a key to encrypt the image, ensuring image security.Finally, the information was embedded into the reserved space.The information can be extracted and the image recovered by the receiver using different keys.The proposed algorithm achieves a higher embedding rate compared to five state-of-the-art RDHEI algorithms.The average embedding rates on BOWS-2, BOSSBase, and UCID datasets are 3.769 bit/pixel, 3.874 bit/pixel, and 3.148 bit/pixel respectively, which represent an improvement of 12.5%, 6.9% and 8.6% compared to the best-performing algorithms in the same category.Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm effectively utilizes the redundancy of images and significantly improves the embedding rate.

Key words: reversible data hiding, encrypted domain, run-length coding, separate, information security