Image Quality Enhancement with 2k-bit Correction in Pixel Repetition Embedding

While a higher embedding capacity of an RDH scheme is a timely need for the recent imaging-based applications, it proportionately degrades the visual quality of an embedded image. Existing RDH schemes have no separate consideration of improving the embedded image quality. This paper presents a new approach to improving the embedded image quality for a high capacity RDH scheme by utilizing a simple 2k -bit correction. A Pixel-Repetition (PR) is used to create an image block of 2 × 2 size for each of the original pixel (that we call a seed) of the image. Unlike the previous PR-based schemes, the embedding conditions are redefined to regenerate the seed pixel from the other 2 pixels of the block to embed additional k-bits in the seed pixel and apply the 2k -bit correction to ensure a better-embedded image quality. The preliminary results demonstrate that the proposed pixel correction significantly improves the embedded image quality at the higher embedding rate compared to the other promising RDH schemes.