Image steganography performance analysis using discrete wavelet transform and alpha blending for secure communication

Abstract

The opportunities to exchange information in the current web era have risen. The increased popularity of the media has posed real challenges to security-related issues. Steganography is a technology for the secure exchange of information. A video, audio, or image intended to raise no suspicion may be the carrier. After concealing the secret information, steganography techniques produce an identical cover image. This will prevent outside observers from noticing the existence of secret information. In the proposed work, alpha is a scaling parameter. Cover and payload images of different types and dimensions, live images from a webcam, and predefined images of other formats have been normalized and preprocessed. A Haar Discrete Wavelet Transformation (DWT) is applied to both the cover and payload images. To generate a stego image, the payload image is encrypted and fused with the cover image. The result parameters such as PSNR, MSE, and Entropy are measured.