A Joint Encryption and Reversible Data Hiding Scheme Based on Integer-DWT and Arnold Map Permutation

A joint encryption and reversible data hiding (joint encryption-RDH) scheme is proposed in this paper. The cover image is transformed to the frequency domain with integer discrete wavelet transform (integer DWT) for the encryption and data hiding. Additional data is hidden into the permuted middle (LH, HL) and high (HH) frequency subbands of integer DWT coefficients with a histogram modification based method. A combination of permutations both in the frequency domain and in the spatial domain is imposed for the encryption. In the receiving end, the encrypted image with hidden data can be decrypted to the image with hidden data, which is similar to the original image without hidden data, by only using the encryption key; if someone has both the data hiding key and the encryption key, he can both extract the hidden data and reversibly recover the original image. Experimental results demonstrate that, compared with existing joint encryption-RDH schemes, the proposed scheme has gained larger embedding capacity, and the distribution of the encrypted image with data hidden has a random like behavior. It can also achieve the lossless restoration of the cover image.