Novel Data Hiding and Blind Decoding in Dithering Halftone Images

In this paper, we propose a novel technique for embedding flexible amounts of data into a dithering halftone image and still achieving a high quality result. In the encoder, we reserve the high frequency regions with nearly the same number of black and white pixels by calculating the pixel connection. The secret data is embedded into these regions. In the decoder, a blind decoding technique is applied without prior knowledge of the original dithering image but with some side information. From the experimental results, a subjective high quality image with flexible capacity is obtained. Moreover, the correct decoding rate is kept 100%, and the original dithered halftone image can also be reconstructed in the receiver