Reversible Steganographic Method Research Articles

Reversible steganographic method of hiding information based on image interpolation

When information is exchanged through open communication networks, there is a possibility of third-party interception. Various methods of data protection have been developed and applied to eliminate this flaw. In this work, a task of developing a new reversible steganographic method of concealing information based on interpolation of an image is set and solved. The developed algorithm has a higher payload of secret information while preserving the high visual quality of the stego image. Results of the pilot studies confirm this and are presented in this article.

Reversible steganographic method based on interpolation and genetic algorithm

Reversible steganographic method based on interpolation and genetic algorithm

Reversible steganographic method based on interpolation by bivariate linear box-spline on the three directional mesh

Data hiding is the discipline of hiding information into digital media. A reversible steganographic method allows to extract data from the stego file as well as to retrieve the cover file. This paper proposes a reversible steganographic method based on interpolation by linear box-splines on the three directional mesh. Secret data is hidden in the error between the cover and interpolated pixels. To have better imperceptibility, we search for the nearest value to the cover pixel that can dissimulate data; this was achieved with two techniques: Optimal Pixel Adjustment Procedure and Message Adaptive Error. The proposed method is tested through experiments on a variety of images and compared to prior works. Results indicate a large capacity of hiding and good values of PSNR. The proposed work was also tested by steganalysis attacks; results show a low detectability rate. We find in the comparison that the proposed work surpasses the literature in the capacity of hiding with an equivalent level of imperceptibility.

Visible watermarking with reversibility of multimedia images for ownership declarations

Digital watermarking technology is primarily the joining of the rightful owner of the protected media. Once the media are suspected to be illegally used, an open algorithm can be used to extract the digital watermark for the purpose of showing the media's ownership. From a hidden watermark in the media from the appearance point of view, general digital watermarking technologies can be divided into two categories: visible watermark technology and invisible watermark technology. Visual watermark technology embeds a watermark into the protected media to declare ownership and deter pirate behavior. In this paper, we propose a reversible visible watermark method, which embeds a binary-imaged watermark into gray-scale images to create a visible watermark. Not using complex calculations, this paper tries to simply change the pixel value to achieve the digital watermark, where our scheme is also against the possible detections with LSB-based manners in use. Furthermore, a reversible steganographic method is used to embed the watermarking information into the watermarking images. The watermark information can then be used to recover the original images.

Reversible steganography based on side match and hit pattern for VQ-compressed images

Data hiding is an important technique in multimedia security. Multimedia data hiding techniques enable message senders to disguise secret data by embedding them into cover media. Thus, delivering secret messages is as easy as sending the cover media. Recently, many researchers have studied reversible data hiding for images. Those methods can reconstruct the original cover image and extract the embedded secret data from a stego-image. This study proposes a novel reversible steganographic method of embedding secret data into a vector quantization (VQ) compressed image by applying the concept of side match. The proposed method uses extra information, namely the hit pattern, to achieve reversibility. Moreover, its small hit pattern enables the embedding of the entire hit pattern along with the secret data in most cases. To optimize visual quality of the output stego-image, the method applies the concept of partitioned codebooks (state codebooks). The partition operation on the codebook uses a look-up table to minimize embedding and extraction time. We also propose the use of diagonal seed blocks to embed the entire hit pattern into the cover image without producing any extra control messages. Compared to the Chang and Lin method, the experimental results show that the proposed method has higher capacity, better visual quality, and shorter execution time.

Reversible Steganography for BTC-compressed Images

Reversible steganography becomes a popular hiding problem in recent years. A reversible steganographicmethod can reconstruct an original image without loss from the stego-image after extracting the embedded data. Unlike traditional reversible methods in which data is hidden in uncompressed images, we propose a reversible scheme for BTC (block truncation coding)-compressed images. The secret data embedded in the compressed image are more difficult to detect than in the uncompressed image. To achieve reversibility, the properties of side matching and BTC-compressed code are applied. The experimental results show that the proposed method is feasible for BTC-compressed images and can embed one more bit in each BTC-encoded block.

Steganography scheme based on side match vector quantization

We propose a steganographic method that is based on side match vector quantization SMVQ. The secret data are encrypted and then embedded in an SMVQ-decompressed image. In the decoding pro- cess, both the hidden secret and the original SMVQ code can be recon- structed without any error. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method provides a high hiding capacity and acceptable stego- image quality, to an extent comparable to a well-known SMVQ-based reversible steganographic method. © 2010 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumenta-

A high stego-image quality steganographic scheme with reversibility and high payload using multiple embedding strategy

Tian’s method is a breakthrough reversible data embedding scheme with high embedding capacity measured by bits per pixel (bpp) and good visual quality measured by peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR). However, the embedding capacity and visual quality of this method can be significantly improved. Thus, we propose a simple reversible steganographic scheme in spatial domain for digital images by using the multiple embedding strategy. The proposed method horizontally and vertically embeds one secret bit into one cover pixel pair. The experimental results show that the proposed reversible steganographic method achieves good visual quality and high embedding capacity. Specifically, with the one-layer embedding, the proposed method can obtain the embedding capacity of more than 0.5 bpp and the PSNR value greater than 54 dB for all test images. Especially, with the five-layer embedding, the proposed method has the embedding capacity of more than 2 bpp and the PSNR value higher than 52 dB for all test images. Therefore, the proposed method surpasses many existing reversible data embedding methods in terms of visual quality and embedding capacity.

Lossless data hiding for color images based on block truncation coding

In this paper, we present a novel, reversible steganographic method, which can reconstruct an original image effectively after extracting the embedded secret data. The proposed reversible hiding method aims at BTC (block truncation coding)-compressed color images. Conventionally, each block of a color image compressed by BTC requires three bitmaps and three pairs of quantization levels for reconstruction. In order to improve the compression rate, a genetic algorithm (GA) is applied to find an approximate optimal common bitmap to replace the original three. The secret data then are embedded in the common bitmap and the quantization levels of each block use the properties of side matching and the order of these quantization levels to achieve reversibility. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is practical for BTC-compressed color images and can embed more than three bits in each BTC-encoded block on average.

Reversible Steganography for VQ-Compressed Images Using Side Matching and Relocation

The reversible steganographic method allows an original image to be completely reconstructed from the stegoimage after the extraction of the embedded data. The traditional reversible embedding schemes are not suitable for images compressed using vector quantization (VQ) and usually require the use of the location map for reversibility. In this paper, we propose a reversible embedding scheme for VQ-compressed images that is based on side matching and relocation. The new method achieves reversibility without using the location map. The experimental results show that the proposed method is practical for VQ-compressed images and provides high image quality and embedding capacity

Reversible steganographic method using SMVQ approach based on declustering

Reversible steganography allows an original image to be completely restored after the extraction of hidden data embedded in a cover image. In this paper, we propose a reversible scheme for VQ-compressed images that is based on a declustering strategy and takes advantage of the local spatial characteristics of the image. The main advantages of our method are ease of implementation, low computational demands, and no requirement for auxiliary data. The experimental results show that the embedding capacity of the proposed method is controlled by the number of declustered groups and the spatial characteristics of the cover image. The results also show that the proposed method has the best embedding capacity and the least running time compared with other methods.