Low-complexity reversible data hiding in encrypted image via MSB hierarchical coding and LSB compression

Recently, reversible data hiding in encrypted image (RDHEI) has attracted extensive attention, which can be used in secure cloud computing and privacy protection effectively. In this paper, a low-complexity RDHEI scheme based on MSB hierarchical coding and LSB compression is proposed. Content owner first utilizes a specific encryption method, including pixel encrypting, block, and pixel scrambling, to encrypt original image, which not only can reserve the redundancy, but also can mask image contents securely. Through hierarchical encoding MSBs of different types of image blocks and compressing LSBs, data hider can embed additional data into encrypted image effectively. Separable operations of data extraction, image decryption, and image recovery can be conducted on the receiver side based on encryption key and data-hiding key. Experimental results demonstrate that our scheme can achieve better rate-distortion performance than some of state-of-the-art schemes.