Multimedia Tools and Applications https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-09341-3 High capacity reversible and secured data hiding in images using interpolation and difference expansion technique Pratap Chandra Mandal 1,2 · Imon Mukherjee 2 · Biswa Nath Chatterji 1 Received: 4 November 2019 / Revised: 12 June 2020 / Accepted: 13 July 2020 / © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract Data hiding is a noteworthy research topic in digital technology for years. Reversible data hiding (RDH) technique plays a vital role for confirming security of the digital trans- missions. A new 2-layer secure, high capacity reversible data hiding technique has been proposed, using the concept of interpolation based data hiding and difference expansion method. Unlike, state-of-the art interpolation based RDH techniques, the security has been enhanced in the proposed technique by concealing the data into the image pixels in non- sequential manner. This technique offers high-capacity data hiding, by considering the maximum difference between neighboring pixels without compromising on quality of the images. It can embed up to 3.19 bpp in Baboon image which is better than the other existing state-of-the art interpolation based RDH (IRDH) techniques. The proposed technique is sus- tainable against the series of tests provided by standard StirMark Benchmark 4.0 analysis. It withstands the steganalysis attacks, viz., StegExpose as a measure of security. Keywords Reversible data hiding · Interpolation · Difference expansion · Steganography · Steganalysis  Imon Mukherjee imon@iiitkalyani.ac.in Pratap Chandra Mandal pcmandal9@gmail.com Biswa Nath Chatterji bnchatterji@gmail.com 1 Department of Computer Science & Engineering, B.P. Poddar Institute of Management and Technology, Kolkata, 700052, India 2 Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Kalyani, 741235, India