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On the embedding limits of the discrete cosine transform

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Abstract

This paper investigates the embedding capacity limits of high-capacity data hiding in color images based on a locally Adaptive-Region Discrete Cosine Transform (AR-DCT) frequency domain data hiding scheme, and explores the relationship between hiding capacity and image quality. It also compares the embedding capacities of various steganography schemes which have been recently published in the literature. Experimental results confirm that our proposed scheme successfully enhances hiding capacity while maintaining acceptable image quality and concludes that the capacity for our DCT hiding scheme can achieve extremely high bit rates of 20 bits-per-pixel, which is much higher than other DCT-based approaches, as well as other spatial and frequency domain schemes.

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Notes

  1. 1 For JPEG standard the block size m×m is 8×8

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions that helped improve the original manuscript. This work was funded by the College of Graduate Studies and Research at the University of Sharjah under project number 140440 for 2014.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Sharjah, Sharjah, UAE

    Tamer Rabie & Ibrahim Kamel

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  1. Tamer Rabie
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  2. Ibrahim Kamel
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Correspondence to Tamer Rabie.

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Rabie, T., Kamel, I. On the embedding limits of the discrete cosine transform. Multimed Tools Appl 75, 5939–5957 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-015-2557-x

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