Controlling hiding capacity using image characteristics with a 2D-DE data hiding scheme

Reversible data hiding techniques have gained much attention during the last few years because of the losslessness requirements of critical applications in military and medical fields. Among the various reversible data hiding techniques, difference expansion (DE) technique is one of the most popular techniques. The most common thing between DE-based schemes is their dependence on one or more thresholds. The threshold is used in order to control the hiding capacity aiming at keeping high visual quality of the embedded image. However, there is no such automatic way to predict or determine those thresholds as they are usually predefined. In this paper, we study the possibility of utilizing image characteristics as thresholds with a block based two-dimensional difference expansion scheme (2D-DE). The experimental results show that a threshold based on standard deviation may be used to control the hiding capacity and this leads to enhance the visual quality.