A dynamic watermarking scheme for quantum images using quantum wavelet transform

In this paper, a novel watermarking scheme based on quantum wavelet transform (QWT) is proposed. Firstly, the wavelet coefficients are extracted by executing QWT on quantum image. Then, we utilize a dynamic vector for controlling embedding strength instead of a fixed parameter for embedding process in other schemes. Analysis and results show that the proposed dynamic watermarking scheme has better visual quality under a higher embedding capacity and outperforms the existing schemes in the literature.     

Color local complexity estimation based steganographic (CLCES) method

In this paper we present the color local complexity estimation based steganographic (CLCES) method that is able of both preventing visual degradation and providing a large embedding capacity. A preprocessing stage is applied in the proposed scheme to improve the steganography security. The embedding capacity of each pixel is determined by the local complexity of the cover image, allowing good visual quality as well as embedding a large amount of secret messages. We classify the pixels using a threshold based on the standard deviation of the local complexity in the cover image to provide a compromise between the embedding capacity and the image visual quality. The experimental results demonstrated that the algorithm CLCES proposed produces insignificant visual distortion due to the hidden message. It provides a high embedding capacity that is superior respect to the offered by the existing schemes. The proposed method is a secure steganographic algorithm; it can resist the image quality measures (IQM) steganalysis attack. The RGB, YCbCr, and HSV color spaces are incorporated in the proposed scheme to ensure that the difference between the cover image and the stego-image which is indistinguishable by the human visual system (HVS). Finally, the proposed scheme is simple, efficient, and feasible for the adaptive steganographic applications.     

A novel adaptive steganography based on local complexity and human vision sensitivity

This paper presents a novel adaptive steganographic scheme that is capable of both preventing visual degradation and providing a large embedding capacity. The embedding capacity of each pixel is dynamically determined by the local complexity of the cover image, allowing us to maintain good visual quality as well as embedding a large amount of secret messages. We classify pixels into three levels based on the variance of the local complexity of the cover image. When determining which level of local complexity a pixel should belong to, we take human vision sensitivity into consideration. This ensures that the visual artifacts appeared in the stego image are imperceptible, and the difference between the original and stego image is indistinguishable by the human visual system. The pixel classification assures that the embedding capacity offered by a cover image is bounded by the embedding capacity imposed on three levels that are distinguished by two boundary thresholds values. This allows us to derive a combination ratio of the maximal embedding capacity encountered with at each level. Consequently, our scheme is capable of determining two threshold values according to the desired demand of the embedding capacity requested by the user. Experimental results demonstrated that our adaptive steganographic algorithm produces insignificant visual distortion due to the hidden message. It provides high embedding capacity superior to that offered by a number of existing schemes. Our algorithm can resist the RS steganalysis attack, and it is statistically invisible for the attack of histogram comparison. The proposed scheme is simple, efficient and feasible for adaptive steganographic applications.     

Quantum representation and watermark strategy for color images based on the controlled rotation of qubits

In this paper, a novel quantum representation and watermarking scheme based on the controlled rotation of qubits are proposed. Firstly, a flexible representation for quantum color image (FRQCI) is proposed to facilitate the image processing tasks. Some basic image processing operations based on FRQCI representation are introduced. Then, a novel watermarking scheme for quantum images is presented. In our scheme, the carrier image is stored in the phase \(\theta \) of a qubit; at the same time, the watermark image is embedded into the phase \(\phi \) of a qubit, which will not affect the carrier image’s visual effect. Before being embedded into the carrier image, the watermark image is scrambled to be seemingly meaningless using quantum circuits, which further ensures the security of the watermark image. All the operations mentioned above are implemented by the controlled rotation of qubits. The experimental results on the classical computer show that the proposed watermarking scheme has better visual quality under a higher embedding capacity and outperforms the existing schemes in the literature.     

A reversible data hiding scheme based on the Sudoku technique

Data hiding, also known as information hiding, plays an important role in information security for various purposes. Reversible data hiding is a technique that allows distortion-free recovery of both the cover image and the secret information. In this paper, we propose a new, reversible data hiding scheme that is based on the Sudoku technique and can achieve higher embedding capacity. The proposed scheme allows embedding more secret bits into a pair of pixels while guaranteeing the good quality of the stego-image. The experimental results showed that the proposed scheme obtained higher embedding capacity than some other previous schemes. In addition, our proposed scheme maintained the good visual quality of the stego-image (i.e., PSNR > 46 dB), which outperforms some existing schemes.     

基于图像复杂度的数字水印算法

对图像复杂度进行了分析,结合人眼视觉系统,提出一种基于图像复杂度的数字水印算法.该算法根据载体图像灰度共生矩阵的图像熵对载体图像的纹理特征区域进行划分,按照不同的纹理特征将载体图像的DCT(discrete cosine transform)块分成3类分别进行嵌入,并利用Watson视觉模型控制水印嵌入强度.仿真实验结果表明,本文算法不仅具有较大的水印容量和良好的遮蔽性,而且对噪声、滤波、有损压缩、剪切等常见攻击具有较好的鲁棒性.     

A high quality and small shadow size visual secret sharing scheme based on hybrid strategy for grayscale images

Many secret sharing schemes for digital images have been developed in recent decades. Traditional schemes typically must deal with the problem of computational complexity, and other visual secret sharing schemes come with a higher transmission cost and storage cost; that is, each shadow size is m times as big as the original secret image. The new (2,n) secret sharing scheme for grayscale images proposed in this paper is based a combination of acceptable image quality using block truncation coding (BTC), high compression ratio discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and good subjective performance of the vector quantization (VQ) technique. Experimental results confirm that our proposed scheme not only generates a high quality reconstructed original image but also generates small, random-like grayscale shadows.     

一种大嵌入容量的可逆数据隐藏方法

为了提高可逆数据隐藏容量, 定义了一种新的基于n维图像块向量的可逆整数变换算法, 整数变换后图像块所有像素最低两位有效位相同, 产生了较大的冗余信息, 可用来实现较大容量的可逆数据隐藏。将该方法与现有的一些方法进行了实验比较, 结果表明该方法在嵌入相同数据量时具有更好的隐蔽性, 并且还提高了最大数据嵌入量。该方法具有较好的隐蔽性和较大的数据嵌入容量, 嵌入数据和原宿主图像均能从隐藏图像无损恢复。     

High capacity data hiding schemes for medical images based on difference expansion

Since the difference expansion (DE) technique was proposed, many researchers tried to, improve its performance in terms of hiding capacity and visual quality. In this paper, a new scheme, based on DE is proposed in order to increase the hiding capacity for medical images. One of the characteristics of medical images, among the other types of images, is the large smooth regions. Taking advantage of this characteristic, our scheme divides the image into two regions; smooth region and non-smooth region. For the smooth region, a high embedding capacity scheme is applied, while the original DE method is applied to the non-smooth region. Sixteen DICOM images of different modalities were used for testing the proposed schemes. The results showed that the proposed scheme has higher hiding capacity compared to the original schemes.     

Adaptive lossless steganographic scheme with centralized difference expansion

In this paper, a novel adaptive lossless data hiding scheme is presented that is capable of offering greater embedding capacity than the existing schemes. Unlike the fixed hiding capacity each block provides in most of the currently available lossless data hiding approaches, the proposed method utilizes a block-based lossless data embedding algorithm where the quantity of the hidden information each block bears is variable. To both reduce the image distortion and increase the hiding capacity, the payload of each block depends on its cover image complexity. Due to the fact that schemes with difference expansion tend to damage the image quality seriously in the edge areas, in the proposed scheme, smoother areas are chosen to conceal more secret bits. This way, a better balance can be reached between the embedding ratio and the stego-image quality. In addition, when recovered the cover image can came back to its old self to the last bit without any distortion at all. Experimental results, as this paper will show, have demonstrated that the proposed method is capable of hiding more secret data while maintaining imperceptible stego-image quality degradation.     

水印能量估计的一般性框架

数字图像水印技术为网络环境下多媒体数据的传输提供了一个有效的版权保护方案 ,当前大多数的水印算法均利用实验来确定嵌入的水印的最佳能量。该文提出了一个一般性的水印算法框架,可以从理论上计算需嵌入水印的最佳容量或能量,对基于酉变换域方法的数字水印算法而言,该框架可以作为一个有用的指导方法。     

Perceptually adaptive spread transform image watermarking scheme using Hadamard transform

The present paper proposes a digital image watermarking scheme using the characteristics of the human visual system (HVS), spread transform technique and statistical information measure. Spread transform (ST) scheme is implemented using the transform coefficients of both the host and the watermark signal. Watermark embedding strength is adaptively adjusted using frequency sensitivity, luminance, contrast and entropy masking of HVS model. The choice of Hadamard transform as watermark embedding domain offers several advantages, such as low loss in image information (higher image fidelity), greater reliability of watermark detection and higher data hiding capacity at high degree of compression. Performance of the proposed method is compared with a number of recently reported watermarking schemes based on spread spectrum (SS) and quantization index modulation (QIM).     

Data hiding scheme improving embedding capacity using mixed PVD and LSB on bit plane

In data hiding, pixel-value differencing and least significant bit are well-known techniques to embed secret data. In this paper, a novel data hiding scheme is proposed to provide high embedding capacity. In case of previous methods, pixel-value differencing and least significant bit techniques were used individually or in combination based on pixel, but the proposed method utilizes first by dividing the bit region and two schemes are used simultaneously in the same bit plane. The experimental results show that the proposed method has strength on embedding capacity maintaining visual image quality without distortion to the human eyes.     

Reversible data hiding with context modeling,generalized expansion and boundary map

This paper proposes a reversible data hiding scheme with high capacity-distortion efficiency, which embeds data by expanding prediction-errors. Instead of using the MED predictor as did in other schemes, a predictor with context modeling, which refines prediction-errors through an error feedback mechanism, is adopted to work out prediction-errors. The context modeling can significantly sharpen the distribution of prediction-errors, and benefit the embedding capacity and the image quality. To expand prediction-errors, the proposed scheme utilizes a generalized expansion, which enables it to provide capacities larger than 1 bpp (bits per pixel) without resorting to multiple embedding. Besides, a novel boundary map is proposed to record overflow-potential pixels. The boundary map is much shorter compared with either a location map or an overflow map even though it is not compressed. The combination of the context modeling, the generalized expansion and the boundary map makes the overall scheme efficient in pursuing large embedding capacity and high image quality. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme provides competitive capacity compared with other state-of-the-art schemes when the image quality is kept at the same level.     

High-capacity reversible data hiding based on multi-histogram modification

Reversible data hiding is a technique that embeds a message into a host image with acceptable visual distortion and then recovers the image without any data loss while extracting the embedded message. The previous schemes mainly suffer from an unresolved problem that the imperceptibility of a marked image decreases severely as the embedding capacity increases. Extending the histogram modification technique, this study proposes a novel scheme that utilizes multiple histograms to increase embedding capacity while keeping marked-image quality. Unlike most histogram modification schemes, the multi-histogram scheme does not suffer from overflow and underflow during histogram shift. This scheme can yield the embedding capacity of 1 bit per pixel (bpp) at the PSNR of 48.13 db for a 512?×?512 grayscale image. To reduce the overhead during message embedding, the work further proposes an iterative multi-histogram scheme. Comprehensive experimental results show that both the schemes can achieve high embedding capacity and image quality.     

On the embedding limits of the discrete cosine transform

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.     

Development of a data hiding scheme based on combination theory for lowering the visual noise in binary images

In order to raise the embedding capacity and simultaneously reduce the artifact effect caused by embedding secret messages into binary images, a novel data hiding method based on the combination theory is proposed. In the proposed scheme, a secret position matrix is designed to improve the hiding capacity which is capable of preventing the least distortion based on the combination theory. Our new scheme enables users to conceal more than one bit of secret data by changing at most one pixel in one subimage. We have derived a formula for computing the payload and the possible modification pixels of a block. Compared with the existing schemes in terms of the hiding capacity and the visual artifacts, as our experimental results show, the proposed scheme is capable of providing a better image quality protector even with a more efficient secret data hider.     

An information hiding scheme with minimal image distortion

This paper proposes an embedding scheme which can embed a message into an image and obtain minimal image distortion for applications which need a high-visual-quality stego-image. The message to be embedded is divided into sub-messages each of which is embedded into a pixel vector with three pixels. A sub-message is extracted from a stego-pixel vector by calculating the differences between pixels. The embedding capacity of an image using the proposed scheme can be more than one bit per pixel and the modification of a pixel is not more than one. Since the modification of pixels is minimal, applications using the proposed scheme can obtain a stego-image with higher visual quality than existing studies.     

Secure multi-group data hiding based on gemd map

Numerous data hiding schemes have been recently proposed based on section-wise strategy. The purpose of these approaches is to enhance security by using a unique key to generate a table. But these approaches are not matched between the embedding secret data length for binary bits and the length of the notation system in the section-wise strategy. In order to enhance the security of secret data and increase embedding capacity, we will propose a secure multi-group data hiding scheme based on General Exploiting Modification Direction (GEMD) map in this paper. Three major advantages exist in our scheme. First is flexibility for the number and combination of elements. Second is the removal of spatial redundancy in our method while maintaining embedding capacity above 1 bpp. Lastly, this method avoids the overflow/underflow problem. Experimental results show that our method enhances embedding capacity and maintains good visual stego image quality. In terms of security, the proposed scheme is more secure than LSB replacement method in terms of resisting visual attack and RS testing.     

Robust gray-scale logo watermarking in wavelet domain

In this paper, a robust logo watermarking scheme based on image fusion is proposed. Unlike existing watermarking schemes, the used watermark is a gray scale logo instead of randomly generated Gaussian noise type watermark. The core idea of the proposed scheme is to decompose an image into frequency sub-bands using wavelet transform followed by the embedding in selected blocks of sub-bands obtained by ZIG-ZAG sequence. Block selection is done by taking variance of the blocks into consideration. The experimental results show better visual imperceptibility and resiliency of the proposed scheme against intentional or un-intentional variety of attacks and superiority is carried out by comparison made by us with the existing schemes.