A novel data hiding method in block truncation coding compressed images

Cloud computing can improve the processing efficiency of applications in a smart city. For instance, in a future smart house, the home-based health care system may take advantage of cloud computing to provide real-time disease management services. However, because cloud is an Internet-based computing system, in which everything is processed online, the transition time of uploading medical images through the Internet will be a concern. Therefore, the image size cannot be too large. In addition, for the privacy concern, when uploading personal medical images to the Internet, they security level of these images should be enhanced. To deal with the abovementioned problems, this paper presents a novel data hiding method, which hides arbitrary data in block truncation coding compressed images. Experimental results show that the stego images produced from this work achieve both high data capacity and pleasing image quality.