Abstract
This paper introduces an improved RDWT-based image steganography with QR decomposition and double entropy system. It demonstrates image steganography method that hides grayscale secret image into grayscale cover image using RDWT, QR decomposition and entropy calculation. The proposed scheme made use of the human visual system (HVS) in the embedding process. Both cover and secret image are being segmented into non-overlapping blocks with identical block size. Then, entropy values generated from every image block will be sorted from the lowest value to the highest value. The embedding process starts by embedding the secret image block with lowest entropy value into the cover image block with lowest entropy value. The process goes on until all image blocks have been embedded. Embedding secret image into cover image according to the entropy values causes differences that HVS can less likely to detect because of the small changes on image texture. By applying the double entropy system, proposed scheme managed to achieve a higher PSNR value of 60.3773 while previous work gave a value of 55.5771. In terms of SSIM value, proposed scheme generated a value of 0.9998 comparing to previous work’s value of 0.9967. The proposed scheme eliminated the false-positive issue and required low computational time of only 0.72 seconds for embedding and 1.14 seconds for extraction process. Also, it has shown better result compared to previous work in terms of imperceptibility.
Highlights
Steganography [1] becomes more and more important as many people joined the cyberspace revolution that involves information exchanging technology
To demonstrate the effect of different aspects of proposed scheme, different experiments have been carried out including the imperceptibility test, false positive test and computational time evaluation
Test results have shown that proposed scheme has higher imperceptibility and provides image with better quality as compared to previous work by applying the double entropy system
Summary
Steganography [1] becomes more and more important as many people joined the cyberspace revolution that involves information exchanging technology. It is the science of information hiding. Audio and video are increasingly furnished with distinguishing but imperceptible marks [2], which may contain a hiding copyright serial number or notice. This may directly help to prevent the unauthorized use. In the context of image steganography, there are two (2) domains which are spatial and transform domain. Spatial domain involves the direct bitwise manipulation whereas transform domain focuses on the transformed image manipulation, which means the original cover image will be changed or transformed first before embedding secret message
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