High Capacity Data Hiding for Grayscale Images

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Chang, Chin-Chen | Chou, Yung-Chen | Kieu, The Duc

Affiliations: Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, Feng Chia University, Taichung 40724, Taiwan, R.O.C. ccc@cs.ccu.edu.tw | Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi 62102, Taiwan, R.O.C. jackjow@cs.ccu.edu.tw | Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, Feng Chia University, Taichung 40724, Taiwan, R.O.C. ktduc0323@yahoo.com.au

Note: [] Address for correspondence: No. 100 Wenhwa Rd., Seatwen, Taichung 40724, Taiwan, R.O.C.

Abstract: High embedding capacity and low image distortion factors are main concerns of information hiding researchers. No scheme can achieve these two factors simultaneously. The purpose of achieving either high embedding capacity or low image distortion varies from application to application. This paper presents a high embedding capacity information hiding method for grayscale images. The proposed method converts binary secret data into secret digits in the base-5 numeral system first. Next, one secret digit in the base-5 numeral system is embedded into one cover pixel. The experimental results show that the proposed method can be used to embed two secret bits into one cover pixel with the imperceptible image distortion. Comparing with some other works, we found that our method indeed outperforms all others in terms of embedding capacity.

Keywords: Covert communication, data hiding, steganography

Journal: Fundamenta Informaticae, vol. 86, no. 4, pp. 435-446, 2008