DUIANet: A double layer U-Net image hiding method based on improved Inception module and attention mechanism

Abstract

Image hiding is the process of hiding secret image into cover image, and revealing secret image from steganographic image. However, the quality of generated images and the ability to resist steganalysis detection of steganographic image can be further improved. We propose a novel double-layer U-Net image hiding method based on improved Inception and attention mechanism. The secret image undergoes Haar wavelet transform, hiding network hides the wavelet sub-band of secret image into cover image. We use improved Inception while cascading convolution and attention mechanisms to better extract and fuse information, resulting in high-quality steganographic image. In the revealing stage, Attention mechanism can help networks extract more features about secret image, then we using inverse Haar wavelet transform to revealing high-quality secret image. The experimental results show that the method can obtain high quality images and have good security. When hiding multiple images, the method still has good performance.