Modulation and information hiding in images

Abstract

We use concepts from communication theory to characterize information hiding schemes: the amount of information that can be hidden, its perceptibility, and its robustness to removal can be modeled using the quantities channel capacity, signal-to-noise ratio, and jamming margin. We then introduce new information hiding schemes whose parameters can easily be adjusted to trade off capacity, imperceptibility, and robustness as required in the application. The theory indicates the most aggressive feasible parameter settings. We also introduce a technique called predistortion for increasing resistance to JPEG compression. Analogous tactics are presumably possible whenever a model of anticipated distortion is available.