Reversible data embedding for color images

The data hiding technique is used to hide a secret message into a cover image which is then sent to a receiver without raising any suspicions. With a reversible (lossless) data hiding method, a receiver can extract a secret message and exactly restore an original cover image from an embedded image. This paper presents a novel reversible data embedding scheme for color images. The proposed scheme mostly embeds two secret bits into one cover pixel by replacing the cover pixel with its permutation whose Euclidean distance is closest to the cover pixel. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme can achieve a high embedding rate while maintaining the visual quality of stego color images in comparison with other methods.