A lossless data hiding scheme in JPEG images with segment coding

TL;DR

This paper introduces a lossless data hiding method in JPEG images that leverages high-frequency coefficient characteristics to embed data without file expansion, improving capacity over existing methods.

Contribution

It proposes a novel encoding algorithm that reserves space in JPEG coefficients for data embedding while ensuring lossless recovery and increased capacity.

Findings

Higher embedding capacity than state-of-the-art methods

Lossless recovery of original JPEG images

No additional file size increase

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a lossless data hiding scheme in JPEG images. After quantified DCT transform, coefficients have characteristics that distribution in high frequencies is relatively sparse and absolute values are small. To improve encoding efficiency, we put forward an encoding algorithm that searches for a high frequency as terminate point and recode the coefficients above, so spare space is reserved to embed secret data and appended data with no file expansion. Receiver can obtain terminate point through data analysis, extract additional data and recover original JPEG images lossless. Experimental results show that the proposed method has a larger capacity than state-of-the-art works.