New reversible full-embeddable information hiding method for vector quantisation indices based on locally adaptive complete coding list

Steganography based on vector quantisation (VQ)-compressed indices is widely used in information hiding. In this study, the authors propose a new reversible information hiding method for VQ indices using an on-line generated locally adaptive complete coding list. The complete coding list guarantees that all VQ indices can embed one or two secret bits which efficiently increase the embedding capacity. Additionally, they propose a mixed coding method with an index position threshold by exploring the biased-distribution of locally complete coding indices in order to reduce the bit rate. Experimental results demonstrated that the authors proposed method has a better performance in embedding capacity, bit rate and the embedding-efficiency compared with the four information hiding methods.