A Novel Data Hiding Scheme Based on Block Features Enhanced AMBTC

In this paper, we first improve Chen et al.’s ternary representation-based Absolute Moment Block Truncation Coding (AMBTC), then we combine block features and AMBTC to design our novel block feature enhanced-AMBTC-based data hiding scheme called BFI-AMBTC-based DH scheme. In our scheme, AMBTC blocks are classified into three types: complex, smooth, and flat according to the distribution of pixels in a block. For each block type, we propose different data hiding strategies according to their unique features. Experiments confirm that our hybrid data hiding strategies work well. The image quality of stego images with our hybrid data hiding strategies not only has been significantly improved but also is much closer to that offered by the conventional AMBTC compared with other existing AMBTC-based data hiding schemes. In addition, the hiding capacity achieved by our BFI-AMBTC-based DH scheme is confirmed almost two times Ou and Sun's scheme.