Seamless Integration of Recovery Information for Reversible Data Hiding Using Enhanced Dynamic Payload Truncation

In the digital era driven by the rapid development of communication technology, personal data protection has become a crucial issue. The ease of information exchange also carries significant risks of data theft and manipulation by third parties, including the compromise of confidential and personal information. In this context, steganography has emerged as a crucial method for concealing secret messages by embedding them within other media, such as audio, where audio samples serve as carriers of hidden information. However, traditional steganography implementations often face several limitations, including the need to send additional files to the recipient and the frequent degradation of audio quality after embedding, as measured by low PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio) values. To overcome these drawbacks and improve the effectiveness of audio steganography, this study proposes an innovative approach that combines a linear interpolation method with an improved payload truncation scheme. This payload truncation scheme utilises data conversion and the use of the lowest digit to minimise the size of the embedded payload. Thus, the main objective of the proposed method is to maximize the payload embedding capacity of each interpolated audio sample while maintaining high stegoaudio quality, so that the secret message can be delivered securely and undetectably. The results show an increase of about 49% in stego audio quality measured by the Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR).