{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,14]],"date-time":"2026-07-14T03:58:45Z","timestamp":1784001525927,"version":"3.55.0"},"reference-count":30,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"7","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,7,13]],"date-time":"2020-07-13T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1594598400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100004663","name":"Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["MOST 108-2221-E-324-014"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["MOST 108-2221-E-324-014"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100004663","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Symmetry"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Recently, Li et al. proposed a data hiding method based on pixel value ordering (PVO) and prediction error expansion (PEE). In their method, maximum and minimum values were predicted and the pixel values were modified to embed secret data. Thereafter, many scholars have proposed improvisations to the original PVO method. In this paper, a Reversible data hiding (RDH) method is proposed where the secret data is dispersed into two layers using different modes of operations. The second layer changes the dividing mode, and the first and the second layers do not take duplicate blocks. Under a fixed embedding capacity, threshold value and block size are controlled, complex blocks are filtered and the secret data is hidden in smooth blocks. This paper also compares the effectiveness of four well-known PVO series methods, the latest PVO methods, difference expansion (DE) method and reduced difference expansion (RDE) method. Experimental results show that the proposed method reduces distortion in the image, thereby enhancing the visual symmetry\/quality compared to previous state-of-the-art methods and increasing its high application value.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/sym12071164","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,7,22]],"date-time":"2020-07-22T05:10:30Z","timestamp":1595394630000},"page":"1164","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":10,"title":["PVO-Based Reversible Data Hiding Exploiting Two-Layer Embedding for Enhancing Image Fidelity"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"12","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4829-0727","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Chin-Feng","family":"Lee","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information Management, Chaoyang University of Technology, Taichung 41349, Taiwan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6605-7374","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jau-Ji","family":"Shen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Management Information Systems, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 40227, Taiwan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yi-Jhen","family":"Wu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Management Information Systems, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 40227, Taiwan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3098-4322","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Somya","family":"Agrawal","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information Management, Chaoyang University of Technology, Taichung 41349, Taiwan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,7,13]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"26","DOI":"10.1109\/MC.1998.4655281","article-title":"Exploring steganography: Seeing the unseen","volume":"31","author":"Johnson","year":"1998","journal-title":"IEEE Comput."},{"key":"ref_2","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_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1613","DOI":"10.1016\/S0167-8655(02)00402-6","article-title":"A steganographic method for images by pixel-value differencing","volume":"24","author":"Wu","year":"2003","journal-title":"Pattern Recognit. 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