High-Capacity Image Steganography Based on Discrete Hadamard Transform

Abstract

High capacity and high imperceptibility are the primary targets for ideal image steganography. For the traditional transform-based schemes, the main challenge is to balance the imperceptibility, hiding capacity, and running efficiency. To obtain a high-quality image in dense embedding, existing high-capacity schemes usually sacrifice running efficiency and security. These disadvantages make the schemes less appealing. In this paper, based on a lightweight transform Discrete Hadamard Transform (DHT), we introduce a simple but high-performance image steganographic model. In the case of only stego-image passed, the experiment results demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieves high imperceptibility and security even in the dense embedding of 8 BPP (Bits Per Pixel). Furthermore, the proposed scheme withstands various tests and shows desirable robustness. The comparative analyses are demonstrated that our scheme is efficient and feasible image steganography.