Real-time error-free reversible data hiding in encrypted images using (7, 4) Hamming code and most significant bit prediction

Abstract

In this paper, a novel, real-time, error-free, reversible data hidingmethod for encrypted images has been proposed. Based on the (7, 4) Hamming code, we designed an efficient encoding scheme to embed secret data into the least significant bits (LSBs) of the encrypted image. For reversibility, we designed a most significant bit (MSB) prediction scheme that can recover a portion of the modified MSBs after the image is decrypted. These MSBs can be modified to accommodate the additional information that is used to recover the LSBs. After embedding the data, the original image can be recovered with no error and the secret data can be extracted from both the encrypted image and the decrypted image. The experimental results proved that compared with existing methods, the proposed method can achieve higher embedding rate, better quality of the marked image and less execution time of data embedding. Therefore, the proposed method is suitable for real-time applications in the cloud.