Reduced Difference Expansion based on Cover Image Bisection for a Quality Stego Image

Nowadays, ensuring the security of shared information is a primary concern to avoid unwanted interception between the communicating parts over the public network. A technique known as data hiding (DH) provides a solution to this challenge. However, when confidential information is concealed within a multimedia file like an image, it often degrades the visual quality. This degradation can arouse suspicion among unauthorized users about the potential presence of hidden data. Over the years, researchers have developed various DH algorithms to address the issue of significant image distortion after the data embedding approach. Nevertheless, obtaining a high-quality secret data-carrying image (stego image) remains challenging. We present a new DH method built upon the difference expansion (DE) paradigm. The goal is to enhance the stego image's quality for a given secret information size. Our experimental results demonstrate an enhancement in visual quality, though it is observed that increasing the embedding capacity introduces more noise.