Integer Wavelet Transform Based Steganographic Method Using Opa Algorithm
Integer Wavelet Transform Based Steganographic Method Using Opa Algorithm
Integer Wavelet Transform Based Steganographic Method Using Opa Algorithm
Com
Keywords- Steganography, Integer wavelet transform, Optimum pixel adjustment algorithm. I. Introduction
Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one, apart from the sender and intended recipient, suspects the existence of the message, a form of security through obscurity. The word Steganography is of Greek origin and means "concealed writing" from the Greek words steganos meaning "covered or protected", and graphic meaning "writing". The first recorded use of the term was in 1499.The advantage of Steganography, over cryptography alone, is that message do not attract attention to themselves. Plainly visible encrypted messages no matter how unbreakable will arouse suspicion, and may in themselves be incriminating in countries where encryption is illegal. Therefore, whereas cryptography protects the contents of a message, Steganography can be said to protect both messages and communicating parties. It includes the concealment of information within computer files .In digital Steganography, electronic communications may include steganographic coding inside of a transport layer, such as a document file, image file, program or protocol. Media files are ideal for steganographic transmission because of their large size. The Least Significant Bit (LSB) substitution is an example of spatial domain techniques. The basic idea in LSB is the direct replacement of LSBs of noisy or unused bits of the cover image with the secret message bits. Till now LSB is the most preferred technique used for data hiding because it is simple to implement offers high hiding capacity, and provides a very easy way to control stego-image quality [1] but it has low robustness to modifications made to the stego-image such as low pass filtering and compression and also low imperceptibility. Algorithms using LSB in greyscale images can be found in [2, 3, 4]. The other type of hiding method is the transform domain techniques which appeared to overcome the robustness and imperceptibility problems found in the LSB substitution techniques. There are many transforms that can be used in data hiding, the most widely used transforms are; the discrete cosine transform (DCT) which is used in the common image compression format JPEG and MPEG, the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and the discrete Fourier transform (DFT). Most recent researches are directed to the use of DWT since it is used in the new image compression format JPEG2000 and MPEG4, examples of using DWT can be found in [9, 10].In [7] the secret message is embedded into the high frequency coefficients of the wavelet transform while leaving the low frequency coefficients sub band unaltered. While in [8].The advantages of transform domain techniques over spatial domain techniques are their high ability to tolerate noises and some signal processing operations but on the other hand they are computationally complex and hence slower [9]. Some of these techniques try to achieve the high hiding capacity low distortion result by using adaptive techniques that calculate the hiding capacity of the cover according to its local characteristics as in [2, 5, 7, 8]. However, the steganographic transform-based techniques have the following disadvantages; low hiding capacity and complex computations [9, 10]. Thus, to get over these disadvantages, the present paper, the use of optimum pixel adjustment algorithm to hide data into the integer wavelet coefficients of the cover image in order to maximize the hiding capacity as much as possible. We also used a pseudorandom generator function to select the embedding locations of the integer wavelet coefficients to increase the system security.
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III.
Proposed System
The Embedding Algorithm: The blocks of the embedding algorithm is explained in the following steps: Step 1: Read the cover image file into a two dimensional decimal array to handle the file data more easily. Step 2: Histogram modification it is used to prevent overflow/underflow that occurs when the changed values in Integer wavelet coefficients produce stego-image pixel values to exceed 255 or to be smaller than 0. This problem was found to be caused by the values near 255 or 0. Step 3: Divide the cover image into 8x8 non overlapping blocks. By this division each 8x8 block can be categorized as a smooth or complex block. Step 4: Transform each block to the transform domain using 2D Haar integer wavelet transform resulting LLI, LHI, HLI and HHI. Step 5: Calculate hiding capacity of each coefficient, we used a modified version of the hiding capacity function. From experiments we found that as we lower the bits used to hide the secret message in the LL sub band the resulted distortion in the stego-image becomes lower; so that we modified this hiding capacity function by using different ranges for k for the LH, HL and HH sub bands where its values are form 1 to 4. For the LL sub band the value of k is equal to 0 and in some cases the bits used is fixed to only bits to enhance the stego-image quality. Step 6: Embed L bits of message into the corresponding randomly chosen coefficients. Random selection of coefficients provides more security where the sequence of the message is only known to both sender and receiver by using a previously agreed upon secret key.
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Fig: 1. Blocks of embedding diagram Between the original coefficient value and the altered value by checking the right next bit to the modified LSBs so that the resulted change will be minimal. Step 8: finally, calculate the inverse integer wavelet transform on each 8x8 block to restore the image to spatial domain. The main idea of using the optimum pixel adjustment (OPA) algorithm is to minimize the error difference betweenthe original coefficient value and the altered value by checking the right next bit to the modified LSBs so that the resulted change will be minimal. The algorithm is the final step in the proposed scheme, where it can minimize the error by half.The main idea of OP A is to check the bit right next to the last changed LSBs is used to decrease the error resulted after insertion of message bits.
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Stgo image Read the image file pixel value to a 2D decimal matrix each value represents the pixel value intensity
Use the secret key to generate the selected co efficient to embed secret data
key
Gather all extracted bit together to form the secret data back in corder
Secret information
IV.
Conclusions
In this paper i proposed a data hiding scheme that hides data into the integer wavelet coefficients of an image. The system combines a data hiding technique and the optimum pixel adjustment algorithm to increase the hiding capacity of the system compared to other systems. The proposed system hide secret data in a random order using a secret key only known to both sender and receiver. In this method, embeds different number of bits in each wavelet co efficicient according to a hiding capacity function in order to increasing the hiding capacity without losses of the visual quality of resulting stego image. The proposed system also minimizes the error difference between original coefficients values and modified values by using the optimum pixel adjustment algorithm.
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