Reversible data-hiding exploiting huffman encoding in dual image using weighted matrix and generalized exploiting modification direction (GEMD).

In reversible data-hiding techniques, the quality of the steganographic image and its embedding capacity are the most crucial characteristics. The main objective of this study is to enhance the Biswapati et al. approach, which embeds secret data directly in interpolated pixels without taking context pixel properties into account. Additionally, they recorded an extremely large position value of the weighted matrix, which led to a significant amount of visual distortion. To deal with this issue, a novel reversible data-hiding method based on a multilayer center folding technique (MCFT) is developed. The suggested approach divides the interpolated cover image into 5 × 5 non-overlapping blocks and then sorts them in descending order of standard deviations. As a result of this sorting, edges and textures are more effectively preserved while also reducing the appearance of frequent interpolation defects. Unlike previous weighted matrix approaches, the position value of the weighted matrix is not embedded directly to generate the stego-image. MCFT is used before embedding to reduce the difference between an image pixel and a stego pixel so that image quality is not destroyed. The Huffman encoding technique is used to preprocess the acquired secret data to increase the embedding capacity as much as feasible. Additionally, to increase embedding rates, dual images are used for exploiting the characteristics of exploiting modification direction. The findings achieved significantly outperform state-of-the-art algorithms, which provide visual quality of more than 50.8 dB peak signal-to-noise ratio PSNR. When compared to modern techniques, the approach also offers the highest level of security and can retrieve the original image without losing any data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]