Comparative Analysis of Reversible Data Hiding with Contrast Enhancement using Histogram Modification and Firefly Algorithm

A novel reversible data hiding algorithms, which have ability to recover the original image without any distortion from the marked image after the hidden data has been extracted, is presented in this paper. This algorithm utilizes the histogram of an image and slightly modifies the pixel grayscale values to embed/hide the data into the image. It has ability to embed more data than many of the existing reversible data hiding algorithms today. It is proved analytically and shown experimentally that the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of the marked image generated by firefly algorithm is better than histogram modification method in this paper. The computational complexity of our proposed technique is less and the execution time is short. The algorithm has been successfully applied to a wide Area of images including common images, medical images, texture images and aerial images. Experimental results and performance comparison of both reversible data hiding schemes (Histogram modification and Firefly algorithm) are presented in this paper to demonstrate the validity of the proposed algorithms.