Abstract - Pixel Value Differencing (PVD)

steganography method embeds secret data in images based

on spatial information. In Tri Pixel Value Differencing
(TPVD) steganography method the data is hidden in 2 X 2
Square block. In PVD and TPVD steganography histograms
generated are having steps at regular intervals. These steps
indicate that there is certain data hidden in the image. A
critical literature survey indicates that the PVD and TPVD
methods are very vulnerable to histogram based attacks. So
the idea is to have effective image steganography application
in terms of better security and better payload capacity. In
the proposed OCTA ( STAR )PVD method we modified the
existing TPVD method by considering 3 X 3 pixel pairs
instead of 2 X 2 pixel pairs. Due to this the number of
available pairs for data hiding is to 8 as compared to
TPVD's 3. So more data is hidden with better security.
Keywords
Steganography, PVD, TPVD, Steganalysis, Histogram.

I. INTRODUCTION
Due to rapid developments in Computers and
communication, message transmission is easy and very
important. It is convenient to deliver an electronic
message. Security during transmission is very important
and there are many ways to ensure. One of the methods of
secret communication is Cryptography. The message is
encrypted and decrypted with the help of some keys
which are known to sender and receiver. Only the person
having this key can read the secret information. But the
appearance of the message cannot be hidden which is a
risk in communication. It may attract hackers.
Steganography is another technique of invisible
communication and is done by hiding information in
some other information. Due to this one cannot detect the
secret communication and hence the risk of attracting
hackers is less as compare to cryptography. In image
steganography the cover media is called as stego image.
This image can be used to transmit secret data to the
desired destination.
Watermarking is another technique for secret
communication. It is used for copyright preservation.
Cryptography keeps the contents of a message secret,
steganography keeps the existence of a message secret.
Hence the application areas of these three secret
communication techniques are also dierent [1, 2, 3].
Research in the area of steganography is required because
cryptographic systems are not that much secure and are
have less strength. Due to policies of many government
organizations all over the world the strength of a
cryptographic systems have been limited. Due to this it is
essential to study other methods for secret
communication. People have started to believe and realize
the potential of steganography. Information hidden in a
company photograph is less suspicious than
communicating an encrypted le over the network.

II. RELATED WORK

A. Image Steganography
An image is a collection of numbers of dierent light
intensities. These numbers are stored in a grid and the
individual points are known as pixels. Today digital
images are most widely used for hiding of secret
messages. Image steganography technique exploits the
weakness of the human visual system (HVS). HVS cannot
detect the variation in luminance of color vectors at higher
frequency side of the visual spectrum [1, 2, 9]. Payload
capacity with good image quality of stego image is very
important aspect. In LSB method of image steganography
data is hidden in each pixel byte at the LSB. But some
pixels turns apparently dierent from their original
values. This eect is easily noticeable for human eyes.
PVD method is one method which was proposed for
hiding large amount of data without degrading the
performance of image. In this method the data is hidden in
dierence of two consecutive pixel values. In this method
only one direction edge is considered. But PVD
steganography can be detected by dierence histogram
analysis. In TPVD method 2 X 2 pixel blocks are used to
hide data. Though it improves the quantity of data to be
embedded, but data can be detected in histogram analysis
[3, 4, 5]. LSB steganography is very simple having low
complexity but embedding capacity is high.
In LSB a secret binary sequence is used to replace the
least signicant bits of the host medium. However many
steganalytic approaches proved that this is not a secure
method. One can easily detect the presence of hidden
data. Histograms of data samples or other derived
parameters in the suspected media can be analyzed to nd
clue of hidden information.
The PVD method hides secret data bits into 256 gray
valued images. It can Embedding capacity of PVD is
much higher without noticeable degradation of quality of
the image. It is better than LSB method as far as Visual
attacks are concerned. Human eyes can detect small
changes in smooth areas than larger changes at the edges
OCTA ( STAR ) PVD
A Different Approach of Image Steganopgraphy


Sachin .A. Thanekar
1
, Ms. Soudamini S. Pawar
2
1
M.E. Computer II Student , D Y Patil college of engineering, Akurdi, Pune 411044, India.
2
Assistant Professor, D Y Patil college of engineering, Akurdi, Pune 411044, India.
(sachin.thanekar@yahoo.co.in, psoudamini@yahoo.com)





978-1-4799-1595-8/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE

110

areas. PVD uses the dierence between two pixels for
data hiding [3, 4, 5].
In PVD method the secret data is assumed to be a long
bit stream and the cover image is a gray-level image. The
image is partitioned into blocks in such a way that no
blocks are overlapping and two consecutive pixels (pI,
and pi+1) are considered for the same. From each block
dierence d is calculated which is having range from 255
to 255. Therefore d ranges from 0 to 255. The block with
a small value d locates in the smooth area, whereas a
block with a large value d is considered as a block with
sharp edges. Human eye cannot observe more changes in
sharp edge blocks. That is more data can be hidden into
the edges than into smooth areas [3, 4, 5].
The embedding algorithm is explained as follows:
a) The dierence value di for each block is calculated
as follows, di = pi+1-pi.
b) Suitable Rk in designed range table is found using
this di as follows, j = min(ui - di) where uk = di for
all 1 = k = n. Located range Rj is found.
c) Using Rj the t i.e. the amount of data to be embedded
is found. The value t can be calculated as, t = [log2
wj ].
d) Read t bits data and transform it into a decimal value
b. For example, if bit sequence = 111, then the
converted value is b = 7. The new dierence value dI
can be calculated as, dI = lj + b, if di = 0 or dI = -(lj +
b), if di N 0. dI is used to replace the original
dierence di.
e) The values for pi and pi+1 can be modied as,
(pI,pi+1)= (pI U [m/2], pi+1 + [m/2]) where m = di-
di. Embedding into pixel pair (pI, pi+1) can be done
by changing values of pi and pi+1.
Steps 1 to 5 are to be repeated for all the secret bits to
be hidden. Thus we can obtain stego image.
For extracting the hidden secret information, the
original designed range table is required for calculations.
The stego image is partitioned into pixel pairs blocks. For
this stego image the dierence value di of two
consecutive pixels pi and pi+1 is calculated. Using this di
suitable Rj is obtained. The value for b can be calculated
by subtracting lj from di. If b is equal to b then we can
conclude that stego image is not altered and is safe. Then
this b which is in decimal value is transformed into a
binary sequence with t bits where t = [log2wj]. In TPVD
[3] method, the data hidden in each 2 x 2 block includes
four pixels of P(x,y), P(x+1,y), P(x,y+1), P(x+1,y+1)
where x and y are the pixel location in I Image. 3 pairs are
considered, P0 = (P(x,y), P(x+1,y)), P1 = P(x,y),
P(x,y+1)) and P2 = P(x,y), P(x+1,y+1)) respectively in
the algorithm for hiding data. Same method of PVD is
used for embedding and extracting data. Three pairs of
pixel for dierences are considered. Only the dierence is
the arrangement of the combination of dierence values.
If dierent reference points are selected then variable
distortion in stego image can be observed. If mi and di are
the dierence values before and after embedding
procedure. Then the rules for nding optimal reference
pair are as follows,
a) If mi is greater than 1 or mi is lesser than -1 then the
optimal pixel pair is I can be selected with the pair
with greatest m.
b) If all mi have the same sign and only one mi belongs
to 0, 1, 1 then the optimal pixel pair i can be selected
from smallest m.
c) If only one mi has a dierent sign from the other two
pairs, the optimal pixel pair i can be selected with the
smallest m.
d) If only one mi= 0, 1, 1 and the other two mi has
dierent signs, then the optimal pixel pair i can be
selected with the pair with 0,1, 1.
By using above rules we can bypass the calculation
steps of MSE estimation for nding optimal pair. Then by
using optimal pair, the new values of all three pixels in
the block can be calculated.

B. Image Steganalysis
Steganalysis is the art and science of detecting the
hidden data into the image. This can be done with or
without the knowledge of the steganographic algorithm
used at the time of embedding the secret information.
Many steganalysis methods are proposed by dierent
researchers in the literature. There are two steganalysis
categories. The method specic approach targets a
specic steganographic approach and attempts to attack it.
The universal methods or blind methods are more general
and can be used for one or more steganographic
approaches. Common features for all stegnographic
methods are extracted and a classication model is built.
This classier is used for steganalysis [7,8,9,10].

Histogram Attacks:
Histogram can be generated for the stego image. It is a
graphical representation of the distribution of color values
in an image. Human eyes cannot detect any change in the
image after embedding. But histogram can provide that
change information. If the histogram is showing steps in
the graph at regular intervals it indicates that some
algorithm is there to hide the data and using that
algorithm data is hidden in that image [10,11].
Universal Detectors:
There are two main phases for this method. In the rst
phase, a set of discriminating features are extracted. These
extracted features are then used as inputs to a suitable
classier which may have a single output to indicate
whether the image contains embedded data or not. This
can be be a single binary value or a real value which can
approximately tells the result. In second phase the
threshold value is used to binarize the output. This
threshold value can be used to check whether data is
hidden or not. Universal detectors can detect dierent
kinds of steganographic methods [10,11].
Chi-Square Attacks:
The chi-square test can be used to determine whether
the statistical properties of an image are changed or
2013 IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Computing Research
111

unchanged. The embedding data aects the histogram of
grayscale frequencies [10,11].

III. PROPOSED WORK

In PVD and TPVD steganography histograms
generated are having steps at regular intervals. These
steps indicates that there is certain data hidden in the
image. A critical look at the available literature indicates
that the PVD and TPVD method are very vulnerable to
histogram based attacks [3, 4, 5]. So the idea is to have
eective image steganography application in terms of
better security and better payload capacity.
In the proposed OCTA ( STAR )PVD method we are
modifying the TPVD method by considering 3 X 3 pixel
pairs instead of 2 X 2 pixel pairs. Due to this the number
of available pairs will be 8 as compared to TPVDs 3. So
more data can be hidden. We are also embedding security
algorithm at the same time for better security.


Fig. 1. OCTA ( STAR ) PVD Embedding
A. Embedding Algorithm

The proposed embedding algorithm the image is divided
into non-overlapping 3 3 pixel blocks.
1. The dierence value di for each block is to be
calculated same as existing algorithm.
2. Suitable Rk in designed range table is found using
this di.
3. Located range Rj is found.
4. Using Rj the t i.e. the amount of data to be embedded
is found. The value t can be calculated as t=[log2wj].
5. Read t bits data and transform it into decimal value b.
6. The values for pi, pi+1, pi-1 can be modied as, (pI,
pi+1)= (pI U [m/2], pi+1 + [m/2]), (pI, pi-1)= (pI U
[m/2], pi-1 + [m/2]) where m = di -di.
7. Embedding into pixel pair (pI, pi+1, pi-1) can be done
by changing values of pi, pi+1 and pi-1.
8. Steps 1 to 5 are to be repeated for all the secret bits to
be hidden. Thus we can obtain stego image.
For extracting the hidden secret information, the
original designed range table is required for calculations.
The stego image is partitioned into pixel pairs blocks. For
this stego image the dierence value di of two
consecutive pixels pi and pi+1 is calculated. Using this di
suitable Rj is obtained. The value for b can be calculated
by subtracting lj from di. If b is equal to b then we can
conclude that stego image is not altered and is safe. Then
this b which is in decimal value is transformed into a
binary sequence with t bits where t = [log2wj]. In the
proposed OCTA (STAR) PVD method, the data is to be
hidden in each 3 x 3 pixel blocks includes eight pixels
where x and y are the pixel location in I Image. 8 pairs are
to be considered,

x-1, y+1 x, y+1 x+1, y+1
x-1, y x, y x+1, y
x-1, y-1 x, y-1 x+1, y-1

Fig. 2. OCTA ( STAR ) PVD pixel positions

P0 = (P(x,y), P(x+1,y), P1 = P(x,y),P(x-1,y),
P2 = P(x,y), P(x-1,y-1), P3 = P(x,y), P(x,y-1),
P4 = P(x,y), P(x+1,y-1), P5 = P(x,y), P(x+1,y+1),
P6 = P(x,y), P(x,y+1), P7 = P(x,y), P(x-1,y+1)
respectively in the algorithm for hiding data. Same
method of OCTA (STAR) PVD is to be used for
embedding and extracting data. Three pairs of pixel for
dierences are considered. Only the dierence is the
arrangement of the combination of dierence values. If
dierent reference points are selected then variable
distortion in stego image can be observed. If mi and di are
the dierence values before and after embedding
procedure. Then the rules for nding optimal reference
pair are as follows,
1. If mi is greater than 1 or mi is lesser than -1 then the
optimal pixel pair is I can be selected with the pair
with greatest m.
2. If all mi have the same sign and only one mi belongs
to 0, 1, 1 then the optimal pixel pair i can be selected
from smallest m.
3. If only one mi has a dierent sign from the other two
pairs, the optimal pixel pair i can be selected with the
smallest m.
4. If only one mi= 0, 1, 1 and the other two mi has
dierent signs, then the optimal pixel pair i can be
selected with the pair with 0,1, 1.
By using above rules we can bypass the calculation
steps of MSE estimation for nding optimal pair. Then by
using optimal pair, the new values of all three pixels in
the block can be calculated.
B. Security Algorithm
For getting rid of distortion following rules are used,
Embedding bit (P0) 5 and Embedding bit (P1) 4
Embedding bit (P0) < 5 and Embedding bit (P2) 6
In existing TPVD the embedding capacity is high and
can be detected easily [4]. In order to provide better
security certain modification is made that, for the
difference d Ri , the maximum number of secrete bits
are selected to new difference in which d is less than new
difference value. And other modification is overlaps
between the boundaries of ranges are made.
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Fig. 3. OCTA ( STAR ) PVD Extraction


Fig. 4. a) Existing TPVD b) Proposed OCTA ( STAR ) PVD

C. Extraction Algorithm

1. Partition the stego-image into 33 pixel blocks, and
the partition order is the same as that in the
embedding stage.
2. Calculate the difference values di(xy) separately for
each block.
3. |di(xy)| is used to locate the suitable Rki. At the same
time, the amount of embedding bits ti where ti =
log2wji is obtained.
4. After Rki is located , lji is subtracted from the
selected |di(xy)| and bi is obtained. If image is to not
altered bi is equal to bi. finally, bi is converted from
a decimal value into a binary sequence with ti bits
where ti = log2wji.

IV. MATHEMATICAL MODEL

1. R: Let R be the set of original images.
R = (r1,r2,r3,r4)
2. P: Let P be the set of stego images.
P = (p1,p2,p3,p4)
R U P = (r1,r2,r3,r4,p1,p2,p3,p4)
R Intersection P = (r1,p1)
let r1 = original image.
let p1 = stego image.
3. S: Let S be the original image size in bytes.
S = (s1,s2,s3,s4)
4. D: Let D be the stego image size in bytes.
D = (d1,d2,d3,d4)
SD = (s1,d1)
Let p1= size s1
Let d1= size d1
5. C: Let C be the set of original images histograms.
C = (c1,c2,c3,c4)
6. X: Let X be the set of stego image histograms.
X = (x1,x2,x3,x4)
7. If C = X then no steps are generated in the
histogram after embedding.

V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The TPVD Steganography method is extremely
sensitive to the Steganalysis attack of the TPVD
histogram [6, 7, 10]. The implementation results of
existing TPVD steganography are shown in table II. There
is not much visual distortion in the image before
embedding and after embedding. But there are steps
generated after embedding the data in the same image as
shown in figure 6. This is the major issue of concern and
hence it is vulnerable to histogram based attacks. These
steps should be minimized to have better application. The
embedding capacity and PSNR ratios are also shown
which shows that there is a scope for improvement.


Fig. 5. Lena Image before and after embedding


Fig. 6. Histogram without and with embedding

TABLE I
COMPARATIVE RESULTS

Cover
Image
512x512
TPVD OCTA(STAR)PVD
Capacity
(bytes)
PSNR
(dB)
Capacity
(bytes)
PSNR
(dB)
Lena 50960 41.79

52430


41.53

Baboon 56291 37.90 52430 39.49






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TABLE II
RS STEGANALYSIS RESULTS

Image Name Cover Image Stego Image
Lena 0.0105

0.0313

Baboon 0.0124 0.0217



VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE

TPVD Steganography method is a new modied
version of the PVD steganography technique and results
in unchanged visual characteristics of the resulted stego
images. However, it is seen that drastic changes are there
in the probabilistic distribution of pixel pair difference
values. Pixels value alters through embedding procedure.
It hazards the security of TPVD signicantly. PVD and
TPVD can be further improved for payload capacity and
security. Modications can be done in the techniques by
increasing the embedding capability and quality of image.
The proposed OCTA (STAR) PVD method uses 3 X 3
pixel pairs hence hides more data than the original TPVD.
Also security algorithm embedded provides better
security. So the OCTA (STAR) PVD is better in terms of
hiding capacity as well as security.

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