Comparison of Steganography Using the Discrete Cosine Transform Method on Image Based Bilinear, Nearest Neighbor and Spline Interpolation

Abstract

The research was conducted in the field of steganography. Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) is a method used in the insertion technique. The results of steganography have problems if they look blurry, have low levels of similarity and high error values. One way to solve this problem is by proposing image interpolation. The interpolation method consists of various kinds and gives each other advantages. This study intends to compare three kinds of interpolation techniques to find the best one. The three interpolation techniques are bilinear, nearest neighbor, and spline. The method used in this research is experimental. Images with extension formats * .tif, * .png, and * .bmp with dimensions of 512x512 px are interpolated by scaling 1.5, 2, and 4. The results of the interpolation process are used to insert messages in * .txt format of 157 bytes with discrete cosines transform (DCT). The image quality of the message insertion is measured by the MSE and PSNR values. The result of the message insertion test shows that the value of the image quality is directly proportional, meaning that if the condition of the message size is fixed and the cover dimensions are greater, the MSE value will be smaller and the PSNR value will be greater. Images with * .tif and * .bmp extension formats have good stability, * .png images vary in size. The smallest error value test results were obtained in the spline interpolation technique and this method when compared to the other two techniques had the lowest average MSE value of 8.221 and the PSNR value of 40,301 dB.