Dynamic data hiding capacity enhancement for the Hybrid Near Maximum Histogram image steganography based on Multi-Pixel-Pair approach

Abstract

AbstractIncreasing data hiding capacity and making it difficult to detect presence of any confidential data in stego images are the key objectives in contemporary image steganography research ever-improving the embedding efficiency. With regard to these crucial and challenging points, a new Multi-Pixel-Pair (MPP)-based data hiding approach is proposed in this paper. It can dynamically increase data embedding capacity of the classical Hybrid Near Maximum Histogram (HNMH) image steganography method while well-maintaining the embedding efficiency. In the proposed MPP approach, the peak value as a reference point in the histogram distribution of a cover image is obtained, and accordingly the pixel-pairs of interest where secret data is to be embedded are determined. Then, the pixels of the cover image are scanned sequentially and data hiding is performed on the relevant pixels by using the Least Significant Bit (LSB) method. In an extensive experimental study of the proposed MPP approach, it is shown that the classical HNMH data hiding capacity is dynamically improved 4.74 to 37.48 times while the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) decreases between 6.62 and 13.75 dB, implying both a reasonable trade-off and 7.61% enhanced embedding efficiency performance. Moreover, using the well-known cover image partitioning technique, offering significant improvements in image steganography, and the proposed MPP approach together, can further extend the data hiding capacity about 7.05%.