Data hiding is a well-known technique which embeds the secret data into a digital media. Most of the existing schemes either have the low image quality, or provide the restricted embedding capacity. In this paper, a new data hiding scheme based on turtle shell is proposed to obtain better image quality and higher embedding capacity. In the proposed scheme, a secret digit is embedded into each cover pixel pair with the guidance of the turtle shell. Experimental results reveal that the proposed scheme ensures not only higher embedding capacity, but also obtains better visual quality compared with the existing schemes.

Data hiding is a technique for sending secret information under the cover of the digital media. It is usually used to protect privacy and sensitive information when such information is transmitted via a public network. To date, high capacity remains one of the most important research aspects of data hiding. In this study, a new, turtle shell‐based data hiding scheme is proposed to improve embedding capacity further while guaranteeing good image quality. In the proposed, turtle shell‐based scheme, a reference matrix is composed and a location table is generated. Then, according to the reference matrix and the location table, each pixel pair is processed to conceal four secret bits. The experimental results indicated that the proposed scheme achieved higher embedding capacity and lower distortion of images than some existing schemes.