High Imperceptible Data Hiding Method Based on Combination Theory for AMBTC Compressed Images

The rapid development of digital multimedia has resulted in a massive storm of large-scale data. The data compression method reduces data size and lowers transmission costs. As a result, data-hiding research in the compression domain poses significant challenges to researchers. This work proposes a highly imperceptible data-hiding scheme for a compressed absolute moment block truncation coding (AMBTC) image. The proposed method addresses the shortcomings of the current block-based AMBTC data-hiding scheme, with an incredibly complex block as non-embedding. This is because embedding in complex blocks causes substantial distortions in the image, resulting in low imperceptibility performance. Combination theory was implemented to ensure the high imperceptibility of the modified compressed images. The experimental findings proved that the proposed method achieved high imperceptibility and high hiding capacity by modifying one pixel in a block to embed confidential bits.