{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,27]],"date-time":"2026-03-27T02:52:40Z","timestamp":1774579960558,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":20,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,1,5]],"date-time":"2019-01-05T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1546646400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Information"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Recently, reversible image transformation (RIT) technology has attracted considerable attention because it is able not only to generate stego-images that look similar to target images of the same size, but also to recover the secret image losslessly. Therefore, it is very useful in image privacy protection and reversible data hiding in encrypted images. However, the amount of accessorial information, for recording the transformation parameters, is very large in the traditional RIT method, which results in an abrupt degradation of the stego-image quality. In this paper, an improved RIT method for reducing the auxiliary information is proposed. Firstly, we divide secret and target images into non-overlapping blocks, and classify these blocks into K classes by using the K-means clustering method. Secondly, we match blocks in the last (K-T)-classes using the traditional RIT method for a threshold T, in which the secret and target blocks are paired with the same compound index. Thirdly, the accessorial information (AI) produced by the matching can be represented as a secret segment, and the secret segment can be hided by patching blocks in the first T-classes. Experimental results show that the proposed strategy can reduce the AI and improve the stego-image quality effectively.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/info10010017","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,1,9]],"date-time":"2019-01-09T03:06:06Z","timestamp":1547003166000},"page":"17","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3,"title":["An Improved Reversible Image Transformation Using K-Means Clustering and Block Patching"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"10","author":[{"given":"Haidong","family":"Zhong","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer and Software, Nanjing University of Information Science &amp; Technology, Nanjing 210044, China"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9308-0876","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Xianyi","family":"Chen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer and Software, Nanjing University of Information Science &amp; Technology, Nanjing 210044, China"},{"name":"Department of Mathematics &amp; Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Pembroke, NC 28372, USA"}]},{"given":"Qinglong","family":"Tian","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Mathematics and Computing Science, Changsha University, Changsha 410003, China"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,1,5]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"469","DOI":"10.1016\/j.patcog.2003.08.007","article-title":"Hiding Data in Images by Simple LSB Substitution","volume":"37","author":"Chan","year":"2004","journal-title":"Pattern Recognit."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Hong, W. (2018). Efficient Data Hiding Based on Block Truncation Coding Using Pixel Pair Matching Technique. Symmetry, 10.","DOI":"10.3390\/sym10020036"},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"244","DOI":"10.1016\/j.sigpro.2017.07.025","article-title":"Interpolation-based hiding scheme using the modulus function and re-encoding strategy","volume":"142","author":"Lu","year":"2018","journal-title":"Signal Process."},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"130","DOI":"10.1109\/TIP.2014.2371246","article-title":"Steganography using reversible texture synthesis","volume":"24","author":"Wu","year":"2015","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Image Process."},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"391","DOI":"10.1016\/j.sigpro.2018.10.011","article-title":"A novel image encryption scheme based on an elliptic curve","volume":"155","author":"Hayat","year":"2019","journal-title":"Signal Process."},{"key":"ref_6","first-page":"185","article-title":"Lossless data embedding new paradigm in digital watermarking","volume":"2","author":"Fridrich","year":"2002","journal-title":"EURASIP J. Appl. Signal Process."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"890","DOI":"10.1109\/TCSVT.2003.815962","article-title":"Reversible data embedding using a difference expansion","volume":"13","author":"Tian","year":"2003","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol."},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"989","DOI":"10.1109\/TCSVT.2009.2020257","article-title":"Reversible Watermarking Algorithm Using Sorting and Prediction","volume":"19","author":"Sachnev","year":"2009","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol."},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"8517","DOI":"10.1007\/s11042-016-3490-3","article-title":"A prediction based reversible image watermarking in Hadamard domain","volume":"76","author":"Pakdaman","year":"2017","journal-title":"Multimed. Tools Appl."},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"255","DOI":"10.1109\/LSP.2011.2114651","article-title":"Reversible data hiding in encrypted images","volume":"18","author":"Zhang","year":"2011","journal-title":"IEEE Signal Process Lett."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"199","DOI":"10.1109\/LSP.2012.2187334","article-title":"An improved reversible data hiding in encrypted images using side match","volume":"19","author":"Hong","year":"2012","journal-title":"IEEE Signal Process Lett."},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"441","DOI":"10.1109\/TCSVT.2015.2416591","article-title":"Secure reversible image data hiding over encrypted domain via key modulation","volume":"26","author":"Zhou","year":"2016","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol."},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"18067","DOI":"10.1007\/s11042-017-4957-6","article-title":"Reversible data hiding in encrypted AMBTC images","volume":"77","author":"Yin","year":"2018","journal-title":"Multimed. Tools Appl."},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"553","DOI":"10.1109\/TIFS.2013.2248725","article-title":"Reversible Data Hiding in Encrypted Images by Reserving Room Before Encryption","volume":"8","author":"Ma","year":"2013","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensics Secur."},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1132","DOI":"10.1109\/TCYB.2015.2423678","article-title":"High Capacity Reversible Data Hiding in Encrypted Images by Patch-Level Sparse Representation","volume":"46","author":"Cao","year":"2016","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Cybern."},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1725","DOI":"10.1016\/j.optcom.2011.12.003","article-title":"Steganography and authentication in image sharing without parity bits","volume":"285","author":"Yang","year":"2012","journal-title":"Opt. Commun."},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"936","DOI":"10.1109\/TIFS.2011.2135853","article-title":"Secret-Fragment-Visible Mosaic Image\u2013A New Computer Art and Its Application to Information Hiding","volume":"6","author":"Lai","year":"2011","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Inform. Forensics Secur."},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"695","DOI":"10.1109\/TCSVT.2013.2283431","article-title":"New Secure Image Transmission Technique via Secret-Fragment-Visible Mosaic Images by Nearly Reversible Color Transformations","volume":"24","author":"Lee","year":"2014","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol."},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"225","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jvcir.2016.06.018","article-title":"Image camouflage by reversible image transformation","volume":"40","author":"Hou","year":"2016","journal-title":"J. Vis. Commun. Image Represent."},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1469","DOI":"10.1109\/TMM.2016.2569497","article-title":"Reversible Data Hiding in Encrypted Images by Reversible Image Transformation","volume":"18","author":"Zhang","year":"2016","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Multimed."}],"container-title":["Information"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2078-2489\/10\/1\/17\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T12:23:48Z","timestamp":1760185428000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2078-2489\/10\/1\/17"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2019,1,5]]},"references-count":20,"journal-issue":{"issue":"1","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,1]]}},"alternative-id":["info10010017"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/info10010017","relation":{},"ISSN":["2078-2489"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2078-2489","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2019,1,5]]}}}