Data Embedding Procedure Research Articles

Generalized Reversible Data Hiding with Content-Adaptive Operation and Fast Histogram Shifting Optimization.

Reversible data hiding (RDH) has become a hot spot in recent years as it allows both the secret data and the raw host to be perfectly reconstructed, which is quite desirable in sensitive applications requiring no degradation of the host. A lot of RDH algorithms have been designed by a sophisticated empirical way. It is not easy to extend them to a general case, which, to a certain extent, may have limited their wide-range applicability. Therefore, it motivates us to revisit the conventional RDH algorithms and present a general framework of RDH in this paper. The proposed framework divides the system design of RDH at the data hider side into four important parts, i.e., binary-map generation, content prediction, content selection, and data embedding, so that the data hider can easily design and implement, as well as improve, an RDH system. For each part, we introduce content-adaptive techniques that can benefit the subsequent data-embedding procedure. We also analyze the relationships between these four parts and present different perspectives. In addition, we introduce a fast histogram shifting optimization (FastHiSO) algorithm for data embedding to keep the payload-distortion performance sufficient while reducing the computational complexity. Two RDH algorithms are presented to show the efficiency and applicability of the proposed framework. It is expected that the proposed framework can benefit the design of an RDH system, and the introduced techniques can be incorporated into the design of advanced RDH algorithms.

Image Steganography Method to Improve the Stego Image Quality and Security using Reversible Texture Synthesis

Steganography is the profession of concealing a privacy message within a stated medium like image, audio or video. The main issue regarding every steganography technique is the changes that occur in the cover image after the data embedding procedure. We are using the source texture image for embedding privacy message in diversion with the cover image. This technique grants us to de-embedding the privacy message and source texture separating the stego synthetic texture. The advantages offering from this technique are embedding capacity that is symmetrical to the size of the stego texture image and the reversible potency to recover the source texture. The texture synthesis method is nothing but the generating a new large texture image with same local appearance and variable size from the small size image.

Reversible Data Hiding Scheme for BTC-compressed Images Based on Histogram Shifting

In this paper, we proposed a novel reversible data hiding scheme for the compressed images for block truncation coding (BTC). In this scheme, the secret data is embedded into the compressed codes of BTC. The histogram shifting technique is employed in the proposed scheme to embed the secret data into the quantization levels of the compressed codes. After the data embedding procedure is executed, the embedded compressed codes still follow the standard format of BTC. The experimental results reveal that the proposed scheme provides good image quality of the embedded image.

Targeted Steganalysis of Edge Adaptive Image Steganography Based on LSB Matching Revisited Using B-Spline Fitting

In this letter, the authors point out that the readjusting phase of edge adaptive image steganography based on LSB matching revisited introduces a pulse distortion to the long exponential tail of the histogram of the absolute difference of the pixel pairs. Making use of this observation, a targeted steganalytic method based on B-Spline fitting is proposed. Experimental results show that the proposed method obtains excellent results for detecting stego images with low embedding rate. The dominant performance of our method compared with state-of-the-art blind steganalyzers, such as SPAM and SRM is apparent. Furthermore, our method can accurately estimate the threshold used in the secret data embedding procedure and can separate the stego images with unit block size from those with block sizes greater than one.

Active steganalysis for histogram-shifting based reversible data hiding

This paper presents an innovative active steganalysis algorithm for reversible data hiding schemes based on histogram shifting. These schemes use histogram shifting to embed secret data in cover-images. However, some histogram patterns originating during the embedding procedure may be recognized readily by a steganalyst. The proposed algorithm analyzes the characteristics of histogram changing during the data embedding procedure, and then models these features into reference templates by using a 1×4 sliding window. A support vector machine is trained as the classifier for discriminating between cover-images and stego-images by adopting the template matching techniques. The hidden messages located at the histogram peak of the cover-image were further estimated by measuring the feature of adjacent histogram differences. Experimental results indicate that the proposed active steganalysis algorithm can effectively detect stego-images at low bit rates and estimate the hidden messages locations.

Reversible data hiding scheme based on dual stegano-images using orientation combinations

This work presents a novel reversible data hiding scheme based on combinations of pixel orientations located at two steganographic images to enhance embedding capacity and preserve good visual quality. Before secret data are embedded, the proposed scheme converts the data into a sequence of digits in a base-5 numeral system. The conversion then extends the abilitity to carry more secret data. When the secret data embedding procedure is performed, the original cover pixel value can only be modified by at most plus or minus one, thus ensuring that the stegano-image also has excellent visual quality. Moreover, image recovery does not require overhead information. Experimental results demonstrate that the embedding capacity is around 1.07 bpp and PSNR reaches 49.6 dB. The experimental comparison also reveals that the proposed scheme outperforms other related schemes in terms of embedding rate and retains a high visual effect of stegano-image.

Fractal curves to improve the reversible data embedding for VQ-indexes based on locally adaptive coding

The VQ reversible data embedding technology allows an original VQ coding to be completely restored after the extraction of embedded data. In this paper, we propose a new reversible scheme based on locally adaptive coding for VQ-compressed images. The fractal Hilbert curve is applied to replace the traditional trace of processing the VQ index table. The VQ index table is pre-processed to create a fractal Hilbert curve. Following the curve to process the VQ index table can get better compression rates in the data embedding procedure. Besides, compared to Chang et al.’s scheme, which compressed the inputted VQ index value only when the to-be-embedded bit b is 0, our method performs compressing operations in both cases that the to-be-embedded bits b are 0 and 1. The experimental results show that the proposed method has the best compression rate and the highest embedding capacity compared with other reversible VQ embedding methods.

Robust Audio Data Hiding Using Correlated Quantization With Histogram-Based Detector

In this paper, two blind audio watermarking methods using correlated quantization for data embedding with histogram-based detector have been proposed. First, a novel mapping called the point-to-point graph (PPG) is introduced. In this mapping, the value of samples is important as well as the correlation among them. As this mapping increases the dimension of the signal, the data embedding procedure (quantization) will be diversified more securely than that of the 1-D domains such as the time or frequency domains. Hence, two watermarking techniques coined as hard and soft quantization methods based on the quantization of the PPG point radii are suggested. The performance of both techniques is analyzed by obtaining the radii distribution of PPG points after watermarking. Experimental results against AWGN attack confirm the validity of theoretical analysis. Moreover, the robustness of the proposed methods against other common attacks such as echo, low pass, resampling, and MP3 are investigated through extensive simulations.