Steganography Using Quotient Value Differencing and LSB Substitution for AMBTC Compressed Images

Ji-Hwei Horng,Chin-Chen Chang,Guan-Long Li

doi:10.1109/access.2020.3009232

Abstract

In this paper, we apply quotient value differencing (QVD) and least significant bits (LSBs) substitution to hide secret data in an absolute moment block truncation coded (AMBTC) image. An AMBTC compressed image block consists of a high mean, low mean, and bitmap matrix. Based on the data structure of an AMBTC block, the proposed method includes three phases of embedding. In the first phase, QVD and LSB substitution are applied to embed secret digits into the low mean and high mean values. In the second phase, an additional bit is embedded by alternating the order of the low mean and high mean or not. Secret digits are embedded in the third phase by substituting the bitmap of smooth blocks. By leveraging the entire data structure of the AMBTC compressed code, the proposed method outperforms related works in embedding capacity.

Highlights

With the increasing usage of Internet services, information security has attracted greater attention
We focus on the extension of the payload for absolute moment block truncation coded (AMBTC)-based data hiding
By leveraging the full data structure of an AMBTC compressed block, our data hiding scheme can achieve a better embedding capacity than those described in related works

Summary

INTRODUCTION

With the increasing usage of Internet services, information security has attracted greater attention. In 2018, Jung mixed PVD and LSB substitution [12] to improve the embedding capacity In his method, the image pixels are divided into a higher bit plane and a lower bit plane. Kumar et al classified image blocks into smooth, less complex, and highly complex blocks [23] For these three types of blocks, the bit substitution, Hamming distance calculation, and PVD are used to embed secret data, respectively. By leveraging the full data structure of an AMBTC compressed block, our data hiding scheme can achieve a better embedding capacity than those described in related works. The remainder of this the paper is organized as follows.

RELATED WORKS

EMBEDDING PROCEDURE

EXTRACTION PROCEDURE

EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

CONCLUSIONS