High-fidelity reversible data hiding in encrypted image based on difference-preserving encryption

The rapid development of image encryption and reversible data hiding technology provides protection of image copyright and privacy. For flexible management of encrypted images, there is a great deal of attention given to embedding information on encrypted images. In this paper, we propose a new technology that combines image encryption and data hiding. In the image encryption section, we propose an encryption technology that preserves the difference between pixels so that reversible data hiding can be effectively used in encrypted images. In addition, we cleverly designed the encryption so that overflow issues when embedding information does not occur in encrypted images. In the embedding information section, we adopt the histogram shifting method to conceal the secret message. We propose a technology that combines encryption and data hiding; encryption and data hiding can be completely independent, and images can be fully restored. Experimental results show that our approach is highly flexible and has a higher amount of embedding compared to those of other related works.