On the embedding limits of the discrete cosine transform

Abstract

This paper investigates the embedding capacity limits of high-capacity data hiding in color images based on a locally Adaptive-Region Discrete Cosine Transform (AR-DCT) frequency domain data hiding scheme, and explores the relationship between hiding capacity and image quality. It also compares the embedding capacities of various steganography schemes which have been recently published in the literature. Experimental results confirm that our proposed scheme successfully enhances hiding capacity while maintaining acceptable image quality and concludes that the capacity for our DCT hiding scheme can achieve extremely high bit rates of 20 bits-per-pixel, which is much higher than other DCT-based approaches, as well as other spatial and frequency domain schemes.