LSB steganography in gray scale images

Image watermarking plays an important role in the field of medical image security and also provides a safe pathway for transfer of medical information through public networks such as internet. In this work, variable pixel and variable bit -medical image watermarking scheme has been proposed to protect the Electronic Patient Record (EPR). The proposed algorithm uses a Linear Feedback Shift Registers (LFSR) to generate pseudo random sequences for randomly selecting the image pixels of 16 bit Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) image and modified logistic map has been utilized for selecting the bits to achieve adaptive Least Significant Bit (LSB) embedding. Integer Wavelet Transform (IWT) has been applied on original image to decompose it to its sub – bands where EPR has been embedded. The algorithm comprises four phases namely, pixel separation, random pixel selection, variable bit selection and LSB embedding. Proposed watermarking scheme has been achieved a near zero Mean Square Error (MSE) and histogram analysis confirms the imperceptibility of the algorithm. The algorithm requires only 0.235542 S to perform LSB embedding on 512 × 512 DICOM images. Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), Normalized Cross Correlation (NCC) and Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) analyses also have been performed to evaluate the efficiency of the watermarking scheme.

Steganography is a process to conceal the existence of a message. Image Steganography involves hiding the message onto a cover image to obtain a resultant stego image. This paper discusses a procedure for hiding coloured message images onto coloured cover images using a lossy Image Steganography technique. The secret images undergo Discrete Cosine Transformation, quantization and AES encryption before embedding using the Least Significant Bit embedding (LSB) technique onto the cover image. Finally, Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), Structural Similarity Index measurement (SSIM), zero normalized cross-correlation (ZNCC) are used for comparing the cover and stego images as well as the extracted and original images.

Security of information is becoming main criteria while transferring information through communication networks. Nowadays images are used as information source; therefore its security from unauthorized or unintended access is important. Image encryption play an important role in protecting images from hacking and stealing while sending over an unsecured channel. The proposed method is a combination of encryption using Hill cipher algorithm along with Elliptic curve for enhanced security. Elliptic curve cryptographic method is used to make the system to asymmetric from the less secured symmetric key encryption technique; hill cipher algorithm. In our proposed method we use both grayscale images as well as color images regardless its size. Steganography of actual image with a cover image before encryption is an advantage. The cover image is selected as it mocks like an informative to unauthorized access. Least Significant Bit (LSB) steganography method is used here as it provides more security than any other methods.

Nowadays, the facilities that offers Internet in conjunction with the capabilities of the infrastructure of communication and information technologies, allowing that the multimedia data can be shared and transmitted in easy and efficient way. As consequence, the multimedia data can be copied or edited in an easy form, and this can be affecting its original content. In a context of digital images, this paper presents a tamper detection and localization algorithm in color images using secure block-based watermarking. This proposal is based on the frequency domain using the lifting wavelet transform, together with checksum criteria that make up the hash key codes, which they are hidden in the least significant bits of each low frequency component. The proposed method is evaluated in terms of imperceptibility and false positive, false negative and tamper detection rates, respectively. Watermark imperceptibility is measured using the peak signal to noise ratio and structural similarity index, respectively. The tamper detection ability has been tested on color and grayscale images using a wide variety of manipulations such as copy-paste, copymove, constant averaging, impulsive noise, and random manipulations. Comparative with the current state-of-the-art is provided.

To develop large‐size and high‐resolution TFT‐LCDs with 10‐bit or higher gray scale, key issues in the driver architecture and circuit design and TFT‐LCD panel issues for realizing true 10‐bit gray scale or higher gray scale images are discussed. We show our recent results of the 10‐bit gray scale TFT‐LCD data driver for 42‐inch diagonal size and WXGA format TFT‐LCD TV applications.

WITHDRAWN: Contrasting the performance metrics of discrete transformations on digital image steganography using artificial intelligence

Tone-mapping-operators (TMOs) provide a useful means for converting high dynamic range (HDR) images to low dynamic range (LDR) images so that they can be viewed on standard displays, but this may influence the visual quality of experience (QoE) of the end-user. There is a need to understand the impact of TMOs to inform the choice of TMO algorithms for different displays, especially for small-screen-devices (SSDs) such as those used in mobile phones. This is important, as mobile devices are becoming the primary means of consuming multimedia contents. However, few studies have been undertaken to assess the impact of TMOs and viewing devices (especially SSDs) on the visual QoE of the user when using. In this chapter, we evaluate subjectively and objectively, the commonly used TMOs in different displays and resolutions for colour and grey-scale HDR images. Our results show that viewing devices have an influence on the TMOs performance, suggesting the need for a careful choice of TMO to enhance the viewing-QoE of the end-user. As expected, the higher resolution, the better HDR-image quality. Surprisingly, there was no significant difference between the Mean of Opinion Score (MOS) scores for colour and grey-scale images in SSDs. The device and TMOs affect QoE for colour and grey HDR-image equally. We found Shannon entropy (SE) to be a good objective measure of quality for colour and grey HDR images, suggesting that entropy may find use in automated HDR quality control assessment schemes, while; HDR-VDP-2 is a good objective measure for colour HDR image only.

Steganography is the art of the hidden data in such a way that it detection of hidden knowledge prevents. As the necessity of security and privacy increases, the need of the hiding secret data is ongoing. In this paper proposed an enhanced detection of the 1-2-4 LSB steganography and RSA cryptography in Gray Scale and Color images. For color images, we apply 1-2-4 LSB on component of the RGB, then encrypt information applying RSA technique. For Gray Images, we use LSB to then encrypt information and also detect edges of gray image. In the experimental outcomes, calculate PSNR and MSE. We calculate peak signal noise ratio for quality and brightness. This method makes sure that the information has been encrypted before hiding it into an input image. If in any case the cipher text got revealed from the input image, the middle person other than receiver can't access the information as it is in encrypted form.

Information hiding is a technology that has been used extensively for the hiding of crucial information within digital media. Image based information hiding chooses digital images as the media to contain the hidden information. This paper proposes a new approach that can hide information into a color image with improved security. The hiding is performed in two phases. The first phase encrypts the information that needs to be hidden with a number of one-dimensional logistic systems. The second phase of the approach divides the encrypted information into blocks with equal size and embeds the blocks within the least significant bits of the R, G and B components of a number of selected pixels in the image. The locations of the selected pixels are determined with a number of one-dimensional logistic mappings. To achieve the optimal security of hiding, the difference between a cover image and its stego image is minimized with a particle swarm optimization approach. Experimental results show that the proposed approach can hide information into a color image with improved security and thus may have practical applications in tasks that require image-based information hiding.

Considerable progress has been made in the detection of steganographic algorithms based on replacement of the least significant bit (LSB) plane. However, if LSB matching, also known as -1 embedding, is used, the detection rates are considerably reduced. In particular, since LSB embedding is modeled as an additive noise process, detection is especially poor for images that exhibit high-frequency noise - the high-frequency noise is often incorrectly thought to be indicative of a hidden message. To overcome this, we propose a targeted steganalysis algorithm that exploits the fact that after LSB matching, the local maxima of an images graylevel or color histogram decrease and the local minima increase. Consequently, the sum of the absolute differences between local extrema and their neighbors in the intensity histogram of stego images will be smaller than for cover images. Experimental results on two datasets, each of 2000 images, demonstrate that this method has superior results compared with other recently proposed algorithms when the images contain high-frequency noise, e.g. never-compressed imagery such as high-resolution scans of photographs and video. However, the method is inferior to the prior art when applied to decompressed imagery with little or no high-frequency noise.

The technique for hiding any information in other information is known as Steganography. According to the technique of Least Significant Bit encryption, secret message is embedded in the least significant bits of the cover image and identification of secret message in the cover image becomes very difficult. This method can be applied for embedding secret messages in many formats like 8-bit, 24-bit or gray scale. This paper compares the methods of LSB encryption for different bits and analyse the value of RMSE and PSNR for each type of embedding. This paper compares the results of 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 bit encryption and proposes the best encryption both in the sense of quality of stego and retrieved secret image. Here 0-bit, 1-bit, 7-bit and 8-bit embedding techniques are not considered. The 0-bit will not embed any secret image. The 8-bit will not have even single bits for storing cover image. The 1 bit and 7 bit is inadequate for embedding and storing the cover image. The 1-bit and 7-bit will result extreme bad quality of retrieved secret image and stego respectively. The 1-bit and 7-bit will result extreme bad quality of retrieved secret image and stego respectively.

In this era of information security and communication, a major priority is the achievement of a robust and secure steganography system when thinking about information concealment. The development of such an information-hiding scheme demands that the scheme be able to hide a secret message within the cover media. The most vexing issues in existing steganography protocols are imperceptibility, security, and capacity, and researchers have frequently emphasized a trade-off between these issues. Scholars have consistently ignored the balance between security and payload because resolving one problem has been shown to have an impact on the other, and vice versa. To overcome these problems, an effective method known as the Conventional Neural Network based Edge Detection Method (CNN-EDM) has been presented for image steganography in this study. The CNN-EDM is used to improve the contributions of the proposed scheme. Four main stages were used to achieve the objectives in this research, beginning with the cover image and secret image preparation, followed by embedding, and culminating in extraction. The last stage is the evaluation stage, which employs several evaluations to benchmark the obtained results. A standard database from the Signal and Image Processing Institute (SIPI) containing color and grayscale images with 512 × 512 pixels was utilized in this study. Different parameters were used to test the performance of the suggested scheme based on security and imperceptibility (image quality). The image quality was evaluated using three important metrics: histogram analysis, peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), and structural similarity index (SSIM). Furthermore, two metrics were used to evaluate the security properties of the proposed system: the Human Visual System (HVS) and Chi-square (X2) attacks. The evaluations showed that the proposed scheme can enhance the capacity, invisibility, and security features and address the already existing problems in this domain.

Background: Recently, information hiding has become an important approach to securely storing and transmitting important information in digital media. Objectives: This paper proposes a new approach to hide information in a color image with optimized security. Methods: The approach performs the hiding in two phases. Firstly, the information that needs to be hidden in an image is represented by a sequence of binary bits, and the sequence is shuffled and encrypted with a set of three-dimensional chaotic systems. Secondly, the binary bits in the shuffled and encrypted sequence are hidden into the R, G, and B components of the pixels in the given color image with a dynamic programming approach. Results: Experimental results show that the proposed approach can securely hide information in a color image without generating significant changes in the visual contents of a color image. The analysis also shows that the proposed approach is robust against potential attacks. Conclusion: The proposed approach is thus practically useful for applications aimed at image-based information hiding.

Based on the NEQR of quantum images, a new quantum gray-scale image watermarking scheme is proposed through Arnold scrambling and least significant bit (LSB) steganography. The sizes of the carrier image and the watermark image are assumed to be $$2n\times 2n$$ and $$n\times n$$ , respectively. Firstly, a classical $$n\times n$$ sized watermark image with 8-bit gray scale is expanded to a $$2n\times 2n$$ sized image with 2-bit gray scale. Secondly, through the module of PA-MOD N, the expanded watermark image is scrambled to a meaningless image by the Arnold transform. Then, the expanded scrambled image is embedded into the carrier image by the steganography method of LSB. Finally, the time complexity analysis is given. The simulation experiment results show that our quantum circuit has lower time complexity, and the proposed watermarking scheme is superior to others.

The method of converting color images from the RGB color system to grayscale images is a simple operation by using the fixed weights method of conversion, but using the same weights to restore the color of the same images is not an effective operation of all types of images because the grayscale image contains little information and it isn't worthy of conversion operation.
 The basic idea in this paper is to employ the mathematics equations which extracted from the grayscale image in conversion operation, this paper presents the method of coloring the grayscale image by using the weights derived from the characteristics of the grayscale image. Skewness, Mean and Standard deviation moments have been extracted from the features of grayscale images and its adoption the determine weights of the RGB color system. This method proved its success in coloring images compared to the traditional method adoption of fixed weights for coloring images because it relies on fixed weights for converting all grayscale images.