A novel DFT based information embedding for color image authentication (DFTIECIA)

Abstract

In this paper, a novel two-dimensional Discrete Fourier Transformation based information embedding has been proposed for color image authentication (DFTIECIA). The DFT is applied on each 2 x 2 sub-image block of the carrier image. Based on channel and the absolute difference value of four most significant bits of the second frequency component in row major order, at most four bits are embedded in the LSB part of second, third and fourth frequency component based on the varying perceptibility of human eye for three channels viz. red, green and blue. The first component is used as indicator for further re-adjustment, if necessary. Inverse DFT (IDFT) is applied on each 2 x 2 mask after embedding to generate stego image. Experimental results conform that the proposed algorithm performs better than the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), Quaternion Fourier Transformation (QFT) and Spatio Chromatic DFT (SCDFT) based schemes. © 2012 Springer-Verlag GmbH.