Quantization-based data hiding employing calibration and locally adaptive quantization

Abstract

A signal embedder hides auxiliary data in a media signal such that the auxiliary data is humanly imperceptible yet recoverable by an automated auxiliary data reader. The embedding method comprises segmenting the media signal into regions, determining statistics for the regions, and adapting quantization bins for each region based on the statistics calculated for the region. To hide auxiliary data in the regions, the method quantizes signal characteristics in the regions into the quantization bins adapted for the regions. The quantization bins correspond to auxiliary data symbols and the signal characteristics are quantized into selected bins depending on the auxiliary data symbol to be embedded in the signal characteristics. A compatible reading method performs a similar adaptive process to define the quantization bins before mapping signal characteristics into the adapted bins to extract the hidden data.

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