Design and Implementation of LSB based Minimum Deviation Steganography technique on High Payload Grayscale Images

Abstract

The paper discusses the design of a new steganographic method for 8-bit grayscale images. Here, the input cover image is decomposed into 2 × 2 blocks of pixels which are non-overlapping in row major order. Each block can embed 7- bits from secret bit-stream. Successive block embedding operation ensures the concealment of the entire hidden information into the carrier image. The proposed method offers a fixed payload of 1.75 bits per pixel (bpp) which is considered to be a high payload in the field of Steganography. The degradation of the stego-image is also not severe in our method and that can be analyzed by observing the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) of greater than 30 dB. In the reverse way, the receiver decomposes the cover image into 2 × 2 non-overlapping blocks of pixels in row major order. Successive extraction of 7- secret bits from each block ensures the re-generation of the secret information. Simulation results ensure that the proposed method is superior than other schemes in terms of qualitative clarity of the Stego-image.