Image Steganography Technique Based on Integer Wavelet Transform Using Most Significant Bit Categories

Abstract

In this paper, an image steganographic technique based on Integer Wavelet Transform (IWT) is proposed. The cover image is transformed using IWT to suppress the secret message into the high frequency bands HH, LH, and HL of the cover image. The coefficients of these bands are labelled into six categories according to their most significant bits (MSBs). All coefficients from different bands which belong to the same category are collected. The embedding process starts from the highest category and continues to the next category by controlling the number of coefficients to match the size of the secret message. The test results show that an average PSNR of 54 dB is achieved with a message size of 67.7 kb which considered reasonable result compared to other steganographic techniques. Up to 70% embedding rate can be provided with average PSNR of 47 dB with full reversibility and perfect reconstruction of data