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A modified DWT-based image steganography technique

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Abstract

The main challenges of image steganography are imperceptibility of the cover image and no recoverability of the secret data. To deal with these challenges, a modified digital image steganography technique based on Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) is proposed. In proposed approach, two new concepts are being proposed to minimize the distortion in the cover image. The first one i.e. secret key computation concept is proposed to make it more robust and resistive towards steganalysis. The second one, known as blocking concept, is introduced to ensure least variation in the cover image. The proposed approach is tested over ten different cover images and two secret images. Its performance is compared with the six well-known steganography techniques. The experimental results reveal that the proposed approach performs better than the existing techniques in terms of imperceptibility, security and quality measures. The six image processing attacks are also applied on the stego-image to test the robustness of the proposed approach. The effects of compression, rotation, and application of different wavelets have also been investigated on the proposed approach. The results demonstrate the robustness of the proposed approach under different image processing attacks. Both stego-image and extracted secret images possess better visual quality.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Thapar University, Patiala, Punjab, India

    Vijay Kumar

  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Guru Jambheshwar University of Science & Technology, Hisar, Haryana, India

    Dinesh Kumar

Authors
  1. Vijay Kumar
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  2. Dinesh Kumar
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Correspondence to Vijay Kumar.

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Kumar, V., Kumar, D. A modified DWT-based image steganography technique. Multimed Tools Appl 77, 13279–13308 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-017-4947-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-017-4947-8

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