Affiliations: Department of Computer Science and Information
Engineering Providence University Taichung 407, Taiwan 433, R.O.C. E-mail:
ychu@pu.edu.tw | Department of Computer Science and Information
Management Providence University Taichung 407, Taiwan 433, R.O.C. | Department of Computer Science and Information
Engineering National Formosa University of Science and Technology 64 Wen-Hwa
Road, Hu-Wei, Yun-Lin, Taiwan 63208, R.O.C.
Abstract: In this paper, a novel color image hiding scheme that is capable of
hiding two color secret images into a color host image is proposed. The secret
images to be embedded are first compressed by the single bit map block
truncation coding. DES encryption is then conducted on the compressed message
before the secret image is embedded into the rightmost 3, 2, 3 bits of the R,
G, B channels of every pixel in the host image. The experimental results show that our scheme provides an average
secret image quality of 29.220 dB. In addition to the improved quality of both
host images and retrieved secret images, our scheme further strengthens the
protection of the secret images by conducting image compression and DES
encryption on the secret image in advance. Therefore, our scheme not only
extends the hiding capability of host images, but also is practical and secure.
Keywords: Steganography, color image hiding, block truncation coding, DES
