A new data hiding approach for image steganography based on visual color sensitivity

Abstract

The increase of data communication globally requires secure exchange of private information. Steganography is a common form of information hiding from an unauthorized access. Secret messages can be in different ways and file formats such as: images, texts, audios, and videos. Transmitting secret messages is important for trading private information between different countries without hacking. Adaptive Steganography enables hiding data with variable numbers of bits based on the size of the secret message and the cover image. This paper proposes a new data hiding approach for image steganography based on the human visual properties using adaptive Least Significant Bits (LSB). Two different methodologies are applied; firstly, the human eye has different sensitivity to RGB color channels which permits different number of bits for every color channel. Secondly, photos focus normally on their middle zone which permits hiding the secret message using a spiral way starting from the images’ edges towards its center. Both methods are used to enhance the visual appearance of the stego image using the simple LSB replacement approach. This approach enables hiding bigger secret message with less real visual effect/distortion. Experiments are implemented using the common image processing photos dataset. We applied the traditional LSB Steganography with our approach using different performance metrics criteria. Our approach presented better results when compared to traditional LSB approach and when compared with similar recent researches.