Image steganography using layered pixel-value differencing

Abstract

This paper proposes a layered approach to improve the embedding capacity of the existing pixel-value differencing (PVD) methods for image steganography. Specifically, one of the PVD methods is applied to embed a secret information into a cover image and the resulting image, called stego-image, is used to embed additional secret information by the same or another PVD method. This results in a double-layered stego-image. Then, another PVD method can be applied to the double-layered stego-image, resulting in a triple-layered stego-image. Likewise, multi-layered stego-images can be obtained. To successfully recover the secret information hidden in each layer, the embedding process is carefully designed. In the experiment, the proposed layered PVD method proved to be effective.