Digital Image Steganography Based on Combination of DCT and DWT

Vijay Kumar1 and Dinesh Kumar2

1

CSE Department, JCDMCOE, Sirsa, Haryana, India vijaykumarchahar@gmail.com 2 CSE Department, GJUS&T, Hisar, Haryana, India dinesh_chutani@yahoo.com

Abstract. In this paper, a copyright protection scheme that combines the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) is proposed. The proposed scheme first extracts the DCT coefficients of secret image by applying DCT. After that, image features are extracted from cover image and from DCT coefficients by applying DWT on both separately. Hiding of extracted features of DCT coefficients in the features of cover image is done using two different secret keys. Experimentation has been done using eight different attacks. Experimental results demonstrate that combining the two transforms improves the performance of the steganography technique in terms of PSNR value and the performance is better as compared to that achieved using DWT transform only. The extracted image has good visual quality also. Keywords: Discrete Cosine Transform, Discrete Wavelet Transform, Steganography.

1 Introduction
The rapid growth of multimedia processing and Internet technologies in recent years has made it possible to distribute and exchange huge amount of multimedia data more easily and quickly than ever at low cost. The data can be easily edited with almost negligible loss using multimedia processing techniques. Therefore, the need for the copyright protection of digital data has emerged. Nowadays, Steganography has become the focus of research for copyright protection. There are two approaches related to steganography i.e., spatial-domain and frequency-domain approach [13]. In the former approach, the secret messages are embedded into least significant pixels of cover images. They are fast but sensitive to image processing attacks. The latter approach contains transforming the cover image into the frequency domain coefficients before embedding secret messages in it. The transformation can be either Discrete Cosine transform (DCT) or Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) etc. Though these methods are more difficult and slower than spatial domain, yet they have an advantage of being more secure and noise tolerant [12]. Among these methods, DWT has been widely used in digital image steganography due to its multi-resolution characteristics.
V. V Das, R. Vijaykumar et al. (Eds.): ICT 2010, CCIS 101, pp. 596601, 2010. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010

Digital Image Steganography Based on Combination of DCT and DWT

597

In this paper, steganography based on combination of two transforms DWT and DCT has been described. The proposed technique showed high robustness against many image processing attacks. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the related work. Section 3 presents the proposed DCT-DWT based digital image steganography approach. Section 4 shows the experimentation and results followed by conclusions in section 5.

2 Related Work
Least Significant Bit Substitution (LSB) [1] is the most commonly used steganography technique. Sinha and Singh [2] proposed a technique to encrypt an image for secured transmission using digital signature of the image. Digital signatures enable the recipient of a message to verify the sender of a message and validate that the message is intact. In [3], a spatial domain approach, the authors proposed the exploitation of correlation between adjoining pixels for determining the bit number to be embedded at certain specific pixel. In [4], a frequency domain approach, the authors proposed that embedding is realized in bit planes of subband wavelet coefficients obtained by using the Integer Wavelet Transform. In [5], authors proposed an algorithm that utilized the probability density function to generate discriminator features fed into a neural network system which detected hidden data in this domain. Tsuang-Yuan et al. [6] proposed a new method for data hiding in Microsoft word documents by a change tracking technique. Kisik et al. [7] proposed a stegnographic algorithm which embeded a secret message into bitmap images and palette-based images. The algorithm divided a bitmap image into bit plane images from LSB-plane to MSB-plane for each pixel. Satish et al. [8] proposed a chaos based spread spectrum image steganography method. The majority of LSB steganography algorithm embed message in spatial domain such as pixel value differencing [9]. McKeon [10] proposed a methodology for steganography based on fourier domain of an image by using the properties of zero-padding. These zeros can be changed slightly where the change in the image is not noticeable. In [11], authors discussed the effects of steganography in different image formats and DWT. They also introduced the number of payload bits and the place to embed. In [14], authors proposed method to spread hidden information within encrypted image data randomly based on the secret key. Li et al. [17] proposed loseless data hiding using difference value of adjacent pixels instead of the whole image. Tsai et al. [15] divide the image into blocks where redual image was calculated using linear prediction. Then, the secret data was embedded into the residual values, followed by block reconstruction. Chao et al. [16] presented the embedding scheme that hide secret messages in the vertices of 3D polygen models.

3 DWT-DCT Based Digital Image Steganography Approach

In this paper, we combine the algorithm [12] with Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). The proposed algorithm is as follows.

598

V. Kumar and D. Kumar

3.1 Embedding Procedure The steps of embedding procedure are as follows: 1. 2. Apply DCT to the secret image S to get DCT coefficients. Decompose the cover image (I matrix) and the DCT coefficients of secret image into four sub-images (ICA, ICH, ICV, ICD) and (CCA, CCH, CCV, CCD) respectively using DWT. Each of CCA, ICA, and ICH are partitioned into blocks of 4 4 pixels and can be represented by:

3.

CCA = {BS i ,1 i ns}

ICA = {BC j ,1 j nc}
ICH = {BH k ,1 k nc}
where BS i , BC j ,and BHk represent the i
th th

(1) (2) (3)

th

block in CCA, the j

block in

4.

ICA and the k block in ICH respectively. ns is the total number of the 4 4 blocks in CCA and nc is the total number of the 4 4 blocks in each of ICA and ICH. For each block BS i in CCA, the best matched block BC j of minimum error in ICA is searched by using the root mean squared error (RMSE).The first secret key K1 consists of the addresses j of the best matched blocks in ICA. Calculate the error block EBi between BS i and BC j as follows:

5.

EBi = BC j BS i
6. For each error block EBi , the best matched block using the RMSE criteria as before and that

(4)

BH k in ICH is searched for

BH k is replaced with the error

7. 8.

block EBi . The second secret key K2 consists of the addresses k of the best matched blocks in ICH. Repeat the steps 4 to 6 until all the produced error blocks are embedded in ICH. Apply the inverse DWT to the ICA, ICV, ICD, and the modified sub-image ICH to obtain the stegano-image G.

3.2 Extraction Procedure

The steps of secret image extraction procedure are as follows: 1. Decompose the stegano-image G into four sub-images (GCA, GCH, GCV, GCD) using DWT transform.

Digital Image Steganography Based on Combination of DCT and DWT

599

2.

Extract the block BC j from the sub-image GCA by using the first secret key K1. Use the second secret key K2 to extract the error blocks. The secret blocks BS i can be obtained by:

BS i = BC j EBi
3. 4. 5.

(5)

Repeat step 2 until all the secret blocks are extracted and form the sub-image CCA. Using detail coefficients from sender such as CCD, CCV, CCH and extracted CCA from above step, apply the inverse DWT to obtain the DCT coefficients. Apply the inverse DCT on DCT coefficients obtained from step 4.

4 Experimentation and Results

4.1 Experiment 1 and Results

We evaluate the performance of the combined DCT-DWT based digital image steganography using four cover images: Peppers, Lena, Goldhill and Boat, each of size 256 256 and four secret images: Redfort, Watch, C.V. Raman and Taj Mahal, each of size 128 128. Figure 1 shows all the secret images.

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

Fig. 1. Secret images (a) Redfort (b) Watch (c) Raman (d) Taj Mahal

We compare the two techniques, LSB [1] and Ahmed A. Abdelwahab [12] with proposed method using above mentioned four cover images and Redfort as secret image. The PSNR values of stegano-images after embedding secret image for above said methods are tabulated in table 1. The results reveal that proposed method has higher PSNR value than the other two methods.
Table 1. Comparison between LSB [1], Ahmed [12] and Proposed methods in terms of PSNR using Redfort as secret image Image Cover Image (256x256) Peppers Lena Goldhill Boat PSNR Ahmed[12] 31.59 31.86 31.86 32.37

LSB[1] 10.75 09.66 11.16 12.91

Proposed method 42.09 41.93 41.84 42.45

600

V. Kumar and D. Kumar

4.2 Experiment 2 and Results

The next experiment was performed to see the effect of chosen attacks such as Gaussian Noise, Sharpening, Median Filtering, Gaussian Blur, Histogram Equalization, Gamma Correction, Transform and Cropping. The PSNR values for four different stegano images and extracted secret images after different image processing attacks are illustrated in table 2. The results reveal that after applying attacks on stegano images, the secret images have high value of PSNR and hence the good visual quality.
Table 2. PSNR of stegano-images and extracted secret images under different image processinh attacks Image G. Noise Stegano-Peppers 19.72 Extract-Redfort 19.50 Stegano-Lena 19.89 Extract-Watch 19.37 Stegano-Goldhill 18.69 Extract-Raman 18.66 Stegano-Boat 19.61 Extract-Taj 15.52 Sharp. 17.15 17.10 13.65 31.01 11.95 31.64 16.10 22.05 PSNR with different attacks Hist. G. Blur Gamm. TransEqul. Corr. form 20.01 26.19 52.80 11.75 13.26 25.36 12.44 38.92 16.25 25.42 40.48 11.78 27.08 37.65 36.34 40.03 16.51 25.06 25.54 12.61 30.06 32.68 20.19 38.66 16.16 19.61 38.42 13.26 20.12 15.52 12.35 38.23

Median Filter. 27.61 23.32 25.37 37.27 24.87 32.38 26.63 21.19

Crop. 08.69 09.51 08.70 30.64 10.07 16.97 08.83 15.84

5 Conclusion
This paper presented a digital image steganography technique in which DCT was combined with DWT. The experimentation was done using different attacks. The simulation results depict that there is substantial increase in the PSNR value of the stegano images. Further a comparison of proposed technique with the earlier existing techniques [1] and [12] establishes supremacy of the proposed algorithm.

References
1. Chan, C.K., Chang, L.M.: Hiding data in image by simple LSB substitution. Pattern Recognition 37, 469471 (2003) 2. Sinha, A., Singh, K.: A technique for image encryption using digital signature. Optics. Communications 218(4), 229234 (2003) 3. Chang, C.C., Tseng, H.W.: A Steganographic method for digital images using side match. Pattern Recognition 25, 14311437 (2004) 4. Tarres, S., Nakano, M., Perez, H.: An Image Steganography Systems based on BPCS and IWT. In: 16th International Conference on Electronics, Communications and Computers, pp. 5156 (2006) 5. Manikopoulos, C., Yun-Qing, S., Sui, S., Dekun, Z.: Detection of block DCT based stegnography in gray scale images. In: IEEE Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing, pp. 355358 (2002)

Digital Image Steganography Based on Combination of DCT and DWT

601

6. Tsung-Yuan, L., Wen-Hsiang, T.: A New Steganography method for data hiding in Microsoft Word documents by a Change Tracking Technique. IEEE Transaction on Information Forensics and Security 2(1), 2430 (2007) 7. Kisik Chang, E., Chango, J., Sangjin, L.: High Quality Perceptual Steganography Techniques. In: Kalker, T., Cox, I., Ro, Y.M. (eds.) IWDW 2003. LNCS, vol. 2939, pp. 518531. Springer, Heidelberg (2004) 8. Satish, K., Jayakar, T., Tobin, C., Madhavi, K., Murali, K.: Chaos based spread spectrum image steganography. IEEE transactions on consumer Electronics 50(2), 587590 (2004) 9. Zhang, X., Wang, S.Z.: Vulnerability of pixel-value differencing steganography to histogram analysis and modification for enhanced security. Pattern Recognition, 331339 (2004) 10. McKeon, R.T.: Steganography Using the Fourier Transform and Zero-Padding Aliasing Properties. In: IEEE International Conference on Electro/Information Technology, pp. 492497 (2006) 11. Mastronadri, G., Castellano, M., Marino, F.: Steganography Effects in various Formats of Images-A preliminary study. In: International Workshop on Intelligent Data Acquisition and Advanced Computing Systems: Technology and Applications, pp. 116119 (2001) 12. Abdelwahab, Ahmed, A., Hassan, Lobha, A.: A Discrete Wavelet Transform based Technique for Image Data Hiding. In: National Radio Conference, Egypt, pp. 19 (2008) 13. Chang, C.C., Chen, T.S., Chang, L.Z.: A Steganographic method based upon JPEG and Quantization table modification. Information Science 141, 123138 (2002) 14. Younes, M.B., Jantan, A.: A New Steganography approach for image encryption exchange by using the Least Significant Bit Insertion. Computer Science and Network Security 8, 247253 (2008) 15. Tsai, P., Hu, Y.C., Yeh, H.L.: Reversible image hiding scheme using predictive coding and histogram shifting. Signal Processing 89(6), 11291143 (2009) 16. Chao, M.W., Lin, C.H., Yu, C.W., Lee, T.Y.: A high capcity 3D steganography algorithm. IEEE Trnasctions on Visualtion and computer Graphics 15(2), 274284 (2009) 17. Li, Z., Chen, X., Pan, X., Zeng, X.: Lossless data hiding scheme based on adjacent pixel difference. In: International Conference on Computer Engineering and Technology, pp. 588592 (2009)