CCNet: CNN model with channel attention and convolutional pooling mechanism for spatial image steganalysis

Abstract

Image steganalysis based on convolutional neural networks(CNN) has attracted great attention. However, existing networks lack attention to regional features with complex texture, which makes the ability of discrimination learning miss in network. In this paper, we described a new CNN designed to focus on useful features and improve detection accuracy for spatial-domain steganalysis. The proposed model consists of three modules: noise extraction module, noise analysis module and classification module. A channel attention mechanism is used in the noise extraction module and analysis module, which is realized by embedding the SE(Squeeze-and-Excitation) module into the residual block. Then, we use convolutional pooling instead of average pooling to aggregate features. The experimental results show that detection accuracy of the proposed model is significantly better than those of the existing models such as SRNet, Zhu-Net and GBRAS-Net. Compared with these models, our model has better generalization ability, which is critical for practical application.