A Simple and Efficient Data Hiding Method with Error Detection and Correction

In recent years, data hiding techniques have emerged as a prominent area of research due to the increasing demand for information security. Existing data hiding techniques typically do not prioritize the verification of the correctness of the extracted data, nor do they attempt to rectify any erroneous information extracted. This paper presents a simple yet effective method by which a recipient can perform error detection and correction on extracted data. Prior to data embedding, a preprocess is applied to secret data. After converting the secret data to a data stream, a data hider categorizes adjacent and identical bits within the data stream into groups. The number of these bits is then recorded as an indicator to extract information and perform error detection and correction. The number of bits in each group is adjusted to ensure that it is an odd number. Moreover, the collected indicator data stream is encoded using (7,4) Hamming code to compact the recorded information. Finally, the concatenation of the encoded indicator and the encoded secret is embedded into the multiple least significant bits (LSBs) of the original image pixels. As for the receiver, error correction can be applied based on the indicator after the extraction of the encoded data. Experimental results demonstrate that this method allows the data receiver to detect and correct errors while maintaining a certain level of embedding capacity and image quality. In terms of image quality, this method exhibits superior performance compared to existing research when the embedded data volume is relatively small.