PVD Blend with Pixel Indicator - OPAP Composite for High Fidelity Steganography

Abstract

The defense researchers have started concentrating on the info-wars, which now has become a new plausible area of interest in the electronic epoch. Valuable secret information could be sabotaged, manipulated or even sold thereby, posing a threat to the very essence of confidentiality. Steganography has been playing a remarkable role in prevention of info-sabotage by adopting a principle of undetectable secret sharing. This technique camouflages the secret data into an unsuspecting image, thereby protecting the very existence of it. The security can be enhanced by cleverly embedding the data, taking care not to affect the quality of the image, along with a random choice of ‗plane of embedding', in case of a colour image. The MSE can be decreased by using Optimal Pixel Adjustment Process, thereby making the secret information more secure and conceited. In this paper the Optimum Pixel Adjustment Process (OPAP) coupled with Pixel Indicator (PI) technique and Pixel value differencing (PVD) in the colour image, is proposed for enhanced stego-image quality and fortified security. The colour cover image, split into three layers namely Red, Blue and Green, act as an embedding platform by adapting Raster scan. While embedding, PI technique, followed by PVD is used to decide the number of bits embedded in a target pixel and finally OPAP technique is employed to enhance the image quality. In order to prove the efficiency of the proposed composite stego, Mean square error (MSE),and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) of the stego image have been reported.