J. Intell. Syst.

2017; aop

Vijay Kumar* and Dinesh Kumar

Performance Evaluation of Modified Color

Image Steganography Using Discrete Wavelet
Transform
https://doi.org/10.1515/jisys-2017-0134
Received April 5, 2017.

Abstract: Steganography is the foremost influential approach to hide data. Images serve as the most appro-
priate cover media for steganography. This paper intends to do a performance evaluation of color images and
its comparison with the recently proposed approaches, using the modified technique already proposed for
grayscale images, by the authors. This approach hides large data in color image using the blocking concept.
The blocking process is applied on approximation coefficients of secret image and detail coefficients of red,
green and blue components of cover image. The blocks of detail coefficients are replaced with approximation
coefficients of secret image using root mean square error method. The key is used to store the position of best
matching blocks. It is being predicated that the work will be able to hide large data in a single image. The
stego image (ST) has better visual quality based on the peak signal to noise ratio values.

Keywords: Steganography, discrete wavelet transform, transform domain.

1 Introduction
The development in the Internet and multimedia processing technologies has made the distribution of digital
data more easy and even at low cost. The data can be well edited with almost trifling loss using multimedia
processing techniques. Therefore, the protection of sensitive data is a major issue. To resolve this problem, a
number of techniques for protecting the sensitive data have been proposed. Among them, digital steganogra-
phy has drawn significant attention from the research community.
Digital steganography refers to the process of hiding secret data into carrier data such that the existence
of the secret data is undetectable. The digital images, audios, videos, and other files can be used as a carrier
to embed the secret data. The use of digital image is of particular interest for the research community as it
requires low bandwidth for exchange [5].
The image steganography techniques are broadly classified into two main categories: spatial domain and
frequency domain techniques [1]. The former embeds the secret data into the least significant pixels of cover
data. The least significant bit (LSB) is the most widely used spatial domain technique. The other well-known
techniques are pixel value differencing (PVD) and histogram shifting. The main pros of these techniques
are ease in understanding and its implementation. However, these are sensitive toward image-processing
attacks.
The frequency domain steganography technique transforms the cover data into frequency domain coef-
ficients and then embeds the secret message in it. The transformation techniques used are discrete Fourier
transform (DFT), discrete wavelet transform (DWT), and discrete cosine transform (DCT). DFT-based tech-
niques introduce round-off errors that make them unsuitable for steganography. However, a few techniques
are available in literature: for example, McKeon [16] used 2D DFT for steganography. The main drawbacks

*Corresponding author: Vijay Kumar, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Thapar University, Patiala, Punjab,
India, e-mail: vijaykumarchahar@gmail.com
Dinesh Kumar: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Guru Jambheshwar University of Science & Technology,
Hisar, Haryana, India

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2      V. Kumar and D. Kumar: Modified color image steganography

of the DCT-based techniques are small embedding capacity and artifact problems. In contrast to DFT, DWT-
based techniques provide both spatial as well as temporal information. They have large embedding capacity
compared to DCT. They are more robust against noise and signal-processing attacks. Hence, DWT has been
widely used for image steganography. A large number of DWT-based color image steganography techniques
have been reported in literature [1, 5]. However, these techniques are least robust against image-processing
attacks. To solve these problems, there is a need to find the optimum block replacement approach for hiding
the data onto wavelet coefficients of cover color image that are robust against attacks.
This paper intends to use for color images, the same work already proposed for grayscale images, by
the authors [15]. The work uses two new concepts, namely, blocking and secret key computation. The main
purpose of introducing a blocking concept is to reduce the effect of an embedded secret image into the cover
color image. Both cover and secret images are divided into small non-overlapping blocks. The blocks of secret
images are embedded into blocks of three planes of cover color images using the best matching criteria.
The secret key computation procedure has been proposed to store the address of the best-matched blocks of
planes of cover image with those of the secret image based on the least error criterion. The performance of
the proposed color image steganography has been tested on a variety of images and compared with several
other recently proposed techniques.
The remaining structure of the paper is as follows: Section 2 presents the related works. The proposed
DWT-based image steganography is presented in Section 3. The experimental results are reported in Section
4. The concluding remarks are depicted in Section 5.

2 Related Works
Numerous color image steganography techniques are reported in literature. The well-known steganography
technique is the LSB substitution, which is a well-known steganography technique in which the LSB of the
pixels is modified to embed the secret data [4]. The drawback of this technique is that it has a much smaller
peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) value, and the extracted secret image visual is not good.
Wu and Tsai [24] presented an edge-based steganography method that utilizes the concept of pixel
value differencing. They also discovered that edge-area pixels can carry more data. This method was
further extended by Chen et al. [6]. They utilized the hybrid edge detection mechanism that combines fuzzy
and canny edge detector. This method provides better image quality. This method was further improved
by Ioannidou et al. [10]. Ioannidou et al. [10] used Sobel and Laplacian filters instead of canny. The main
drawback of this technique is the overhead of two different files that contain the information about data
embedding.
Kumar and Kumar [13] proposed a steganography technique based on the combination of the DCT and the
DWT. They applied the DCT on a secret image to find the DCT coefficients. Thereafter, they applied the DWT
on the cover image and the DCT coefficient image to find the image features. The extracted image features of
the secret image are embedded into the cover image. The main drawback of this technique is to hide the image
features only in one portion of the cover image. Kumar and Kumar [14] proposed a new color image steganog-
raphy technique using the DWT. They divided the cover image based on the red, green and blue (RGB) method,
thereafter, hiding the secret image into the RGB of the cover image. However, the embedding capacity of this
approach is low.
Karim et al. [12] proposed a novel approach based on the LSB using a secret key. The secret key encrypts
the hidden information, and then, it is stored into a different position of the LSB of the image. This method
provides better security than the other existing techniques. Shejul and Kulkarni [22] proposed an algorithm in
which binary images are embedded inside the cover image by taking the color planes of the cover image. The
secret image is inserted into the cover image by cropping the cover image according to the skin tone detection
and then applying the DWT. However, the embedding capacity of this approach is too low.
Rubab and Younus [21] proposed a method using the DWT and the Blowfish encryption technique to
conceal the text message in the color image. The drawback of this technique is that it is computationally

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 V. Kumar and D. Kumar: Modified color image steganography      3

expensive. Bassil [3] proposed a color image steganography that utilizes the canny edge detector. The LSBs
of every edge pixel identified by the canny edge detector are replaced with secret bits. However, it did not
provide the guarantee of correct retrieval of the secret data. Hemalatha et  al. [9] designed an image steg-
anography technique to hide both image and key in the color cover image using the DWT and the integer
wavelet transform (IWT). However, the security of the hidden data is less. Ghebleh and Kanso [7] proposed
a chaotic algorithm technique based on a three-dimensional chaotic cat map and the DWT. They embedded
the cat map of a secret image into the cover image. Kanan and Nazeri [11] designed a lossless spatial domain
technique that uses a genetic algorithm to find the best positions in the cover image for data embedding.
However, it suffers from large computational complexity problem.
Ou and Sun [18] proposed a method for image steganography based on the absolute moment block
truncation coding (AMBTC). In this scheme, a threshold computed to classify the blocks of the AMBTC com-
pressed codes as smooth or complex blocks in which data can be embedded. The two quantization levels in
smooth block are re-calculated to minimize the distortion in the image. Gunjal and Mali [8] proposed a tech-
nique that utilized both the DWT and the singular value decomposition (SVD). They applied the DWT on the
cover image to decompose in different bands. Thereafter, the SVD was applied on the approximation band
to further decompose. The secret data were embedded in the decomposed band to increase the security. Pan
et al. [19] proposed a technique that combined compressive sensing with subsampling. The cover image tends
to be compressed in the transform domain. The characteristics of compressive sensing, dimensional reduc-
tion, and random projection were utilized to insert the secret message into the compressive sensing trans-
form domain of the sparse image. The bit correction rate between the original secret image and the extracted
message was used to compute the accuracy [14, 18].
Yang and Wang [25] developed a color image steganography technique based on a smart pixel-adjust-
ment process. The block of two adjacent color pixels is used to embed the secret data. However, the embed-
ding capacity of this technique is not high. Baby et al. [2] proposed a data-hiding technique that utilizes the
DWT for embedding the multiple color images into a single image. The secret images were embedded into
three color planes of the cover images. Swain [23] proposed an adaptive PVD steganography technique. In
this technique, the secret data is embedded in the block of each color plane. During the embedding process,
the vertical and horizontal edges are exploited in each block. This technique works on the color plane instead
of the color pixels.
Prasad and Pal [20] presented a color image steganography technique that utilizes the concept of the
PVD. This technique has readjusted the overlapping blocks of the color components. The main advantages
of this technique is its simplicity and is easy to implement. Muhammad et al. [17] proposed a secure image
steganography technique based on the stego key-directed adaptive least significant bit (SKA-LSB) method.
The stego key and secret data are encrypted using a two-level encryption and multi-level encryption algo-
rithm, respectively. The encrypted information is embedded in the cover image using an adaptive LSB
technique.
As we have seen in the study of previous works, it has been found that color image steganography algo-
rithms are good at embedding secret messages either text or image, but there is a possibility to enhance the
capacity of these techniques so that the same can carry large secret information.

3 Color Image Steganography

3.1 Contribution

Earlier the authors Kumar and Kumar [15] used these concepts for grayscale image steganography. The same
concepts have been applied for color image steganography. The concepts are reproduced as follows:
There are two problems that made us introduce the concepts to yield modified algorithm for steganogra-
phy. These problems are mentioned below:

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4      V. Kumar and D. Kumar: Modified color image steganography

1. Kumar and Kumar [13] used the concept of error blocks for secret image embedding. They have used the
two-stage matching process. Therefore, the time complexity of the steganography technique is increased.
2. It uses only one detail coefficient block (i.e. horizontal) to embed the secret image.

–– Solution 1. Optimal block matching.

Kumar and Kumar [13] used the two-stage matching process that utilizes the concept of error block. To
reduce the time complexity, the approximation coefficient blocks of the secret image are directly matched
with the detail coefficient blocks of the cover image. There is no need to compute the error blocks for
further matching.
–– Solution 2. Optimal replacement block computation.
Kumar and Kumar [13] used horizontal coefficient blocks for embedding the secret image block. In this
paper, we matched the secret image blocks with three detail coefficient blocks (i.e. horizontal, vertical,
and diagonal) of the color cover image. The best matched detail coefficient block is selected for embed-
ding the secret image block. This approach greatly reduces the distortion in stego color image.

3.2 M
 odified Color Image Steganography Technique

The main contribution of this paper is to evaluate the performance of the modified steganography approach
for the color images. The DWT is used to decompose both the cover and secret images. The technique consists
of two procedures: embedding and extraction. The details of these procedures are illustrated as follows.

3.2.1 Embedding Procedure

Figure 1 shows the block diagram of the proposed embedding procedure. The color cover image is decom-
posed into three color planes (i.e. R, G, and B). The three color planes are further decomposed into four
coefficients: approximation coefficients, horizontal detail coefficients, vertical detail coefficients, and diago-
nal detail coefficients using DWT. The secret image is also decomposed into four coefficients such as the

Cover color image

Secret image

Cover plane
separation

Discrete wavelet
Discrete wavelet transform
transform

Extraction of 4 × 4 blocks Extraction of 4 × 4 blocks

from approximation and from approximation
detail coefficients coefficients

Matching of approximation
Position
blocks of secret image with
memorization
detail blocks of cover image

Embedded in detail
coefficients of Inverse DWT Stego image
cover image

Figure 1: Proposed Embedding Procedure.

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 V. Kumar and D. Kumar: Modified color image steganography      5

­ pproximation coefficients, horizontal detail coefficients, vertical detail coefficients, and diagonal detail
a
coefficients using DWT. These coefficients are partitioned into non-overlapping blocks. The approximation
coefficient blocks of the secret image are matched with the detail coefficients of the color planes of the cover
image. The replacement of the secret blocks is done with the best matched detail coefficient block of the cover
image. The inverse DWT is applied on the approximation and modified detail coefficients of the color image
to obtain the stego image (ST).
The steps of the embedding procedure are described in detail as follows:
1. Read the cover image (C) and secret image (S). Decompose C into three planes R, G, and B.
C → { RC , GC , BC }

2. Apply DWT on the RGB components of C and the secret image S.

DWT ( RC ) → { RCA , RCH , RCV , RCD }

DWT (GC ) → {GCA , GCH , GCV , GCD }

DWT ( BC ) → { BCA , BCH , BCV , BCD }

DWT ( S ) → { SA , SH , SV , SD }

3. Apply the blocking process on the approximation coefficients of the R, G, and B planes of C and the approxi-
mation coefficients of S. The approximation coefficients are decomposed into blocks of 4 × 4 pixels.

SA → { BSA , 1 ≤ i ≤ BSA }
i N

RCA → { BRCA , 1 ≤ i ≤ BRCA }

i N

GCA → { BGCA , 1 ≤ i ≤ BGCA }

i N

BCA → { BBCA , 1 ≤ i ≤ BBCA }

i N

4. Apply the blocking process on the detail coefficients of the R plane of C. All of these coefficients are
decomposed into blocks of 4 × 4 pixels.

RCH → { BRCH , 1 ≤ i ≤ BRCH }

i N

RCV → { BRCV , 1 ≤ i ≤ BRCV }

i N

RCD → { BRCD , 1 ≤ i ≤ BRCD }

i N

5. Apply the blocking process on the detail coefficients of the G plane of C. All of these coefficients are
decomposed into blocks of 4 × 4 pixels.

GCH → { BGCH , 1 ≤ i ≤ BGCH }

i N

GCV → { BGCV , 1 ≤ i ≤ BGCV }

i N

GCD → { BGCD , 1 ≤ i ≤ BGCD }

i N

6. Apply the blocking process on the detail coefficients of the B plane of C. All of these coefficients are
decomposed into blocks of 4 × 4 pixels.

BCH → { BBCH , 1 ≤ i ≤ BBCH }

i N

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6      V. Kumar and D. Kumar: Modified color image steganography

BCV → { BBCV , 1 ≤ i ≤ BBCV }

i N

BCD → { BBCD , 1 ≤ i ≤ BBCD }

i N

7. Each block of the secret image ( BSA ) is matched with the detail coefficients of the R, G, and B planes of C.
i
The block matching is done with the root mean square error. The position of the minimum error blocks of
the R, G, and B planes are stored. The position of the best matched blocks is stored in Key K1.
8. Replace the best matched detailed coefficients of the R, G, and B planes of C with the approximation
­coefficients of the secret image.
9. Apply the IDWT on the modified detailed coefficients of the R, G, and B planes of C. The stego image (ST)
is produced.

3.2.2 Extraction Procedure

The block diagram of the extraction procedure is shown in Figure  2. The ST is separated into three color
planes. The three color planes are further decomposed into four coefficients using the DWT. These coeffi-
cients are partitioned into non-overlapping blocks. The best matched blocks are extracted from the detailed
coefficients. The secret image is generated from the extracted blocks. The extraction procedure is described
in detail as follows:
1. Decompose the ST into the three color planes, R, G, and B.
ST → { RST , GST , BST }

2. Apply the DWT on all the three color planes R, G, and B planes of the ST.

DWT ( RST ) → { RST , RST , RST , RST }

A H V D

DWT (GST ) → {GST , GST , GST , GST }

A H V D

DWT ( BST ) → { BST , BST , BST , BST }

A H V D

3. Apply the blocking process on the detail coefficients of the R, G, and B planes of the ST. All of these
­coefficients are decomposed into blocks of 4 × 4 pixels.
4. The position of the embedded blocks of the secret image is found using the Key K1. These embedded
blocks are the approximation coefficients of S.
5. Apply the IDWT on the extracted approximation blocks and detailed coefficients of S. This will produce
the extracted secret image from the ST.

Stego image

Separation of color
planes

4 × 4 blocks of
Discrete wavelet Detail
detail
transform coefficients
coefficients

Retrieval of
Secret image Inverse DWT
embedded block

Figure 2: Proposed Extraction Procedure.

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 V. Kumar and D. Kumar: Modified color image steganography      7

4 Performance Evaluation
The performance of the proposed technique is evaluated on the different cover and secret images.
The  experimental results are assessed and compared with four recently developed steganography
techniques.

4.1 Images Used

The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated using four color cover images and two grayscale
secret images. The color images are Goldhill, Lena, Barbara, and Plane. The secret images are Cameraman and
Baboon. The size of these images is 256 × 256. Figure 3 shows the cover images. The secret images are shown
in Figure 4.
The Cameraman and Baboon images were embedded in the above-mentioned four color images.
Figures  5 and  6 show the STs after embedding the Cameraman and Baboon secret images into the
­above-mentioned cover images, respectively, using the proposed technique. The visual quality of the STs
is good.

Figure 3: Original Cover Images: (A) Goldhill, (B) Lena, (C) Barbara, (D) Plane.

Figure 4: Original Secret Images: (A) Cameraman, (B) Baboon.

Figure 5: STs After Embedding the Cameraman Image: (A) Goldhill, (B) Lena, (C) Barbara, (D) Plane.

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8      V. Kumar and D. Kumar: Modified color image steganography

Figure 6: STs After Embedding the Baboon Image: (A) Goldhill, (B) Lena, (C) Barbara, (D) Plane.

4.2 A
 lgorithms Involved for Comparison

In order to validate the performance of the proposed approach, it is compared with the four well-known
techniques developed such as the DCT- and the DWT-based steganography technique (DCWS) [13], smart
pixel adjustment based steganography technique (SPAS) [25], adaptive PVD-based steganography technique
(APS) [23], and overlapping block-based PVD steganography technique (OBPS) [20]. All the above-mentioned
techniques are implemented and tested on color images. PSNR is used to measure the quality of the ST and
extracted secret image.

5 Results and Discussion

The imperceptibility of the ST and extracted secret images are evaluated using PSNR. Tables 1 and 2 depict the
PSNR values of the STs after embedding Cameraman and Baboon as secret images, respectively. The experi-
mental results reveal that the proposed approach provides better PSNR than the other four recently devel-
oped techniques. Because of the blocking concept, the proposed approach can easily embed the secret image
in the matched detail wavelet coefficient blocks of the cover image compared with other techniques. The pro-
posed approach produces least distortion in the cover image during the embedding, which is also confirmed
by its high PSNR values. The proposed approach provides better quality of the ST.
Tables 3 and 4 show the PSNR values of the extracted Cameraman and Baboon secret images, respectively.
The results depict that the PSNR value of the proposed approach is better than the existing techniques. The
results also reveal that the proposed approach provides good imperceptibility of the extracted secret image.

Table 1: PSNR Values of ST Using Cameraman as a Secret Image.

Cover images DCWS SPAS APS OBPS Proposed

Goldhill 26.8002 27.1355 27.5253 27.9825 28.2911

Lena 32.9989 32.0671 33.0964 33.1779 33.2558
Barbara 23.6012 24.5689 24.8137 25.1528 25.9011
Plane 30.8876 31.2134 31.9921 32.0267 32.6326

Table 2: PSNR Values of ST Using Baboon as a Secret Image.

Cover images DCWS SPAS APS OBPS Proposed

Goldhill 27.0009 27.8790 28.1128 28.9921 29.8260

Lena 34.6189 34.7085 34.7123 34.7819 34.9175
Barbara 26.8685 26.9972 27.0193 27.2143 27.7151
Plane 32.2478 32.8557 33.1562 33.1908 33.8283

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 V. Kumar and D. Kumar: Modified color image steganography      9

Table 3: PSNR Values of Extracted Cameraman.

Cover images DCWS SPAS APS OBPS Proposed

Goldhill 10.5545 11.2512 11.6427 11.8761 12.0564

Lena 10.2479 10.5941 10.5830 10.6523 10.7692
Barbara 10.9692 11.1478 11.4628 11.8561 12.5284
Plane 10.4774 10.5569 10.5572 10.5599 10.5619

Table 4: PSNR Values of Extracted Baboon.

Cover images DCWS SPAS APS OBPS Proposed

Goldhill 10.7568 11.8634 12.3823 12.7142 13.7351

Lena 10.4920 10.9754 11.3857 11.8735 12.4739
Barbara 10.7267 10.6958 10.7285 10.7317 10.7329
Plane 11.3466 11.7761 12.1246 12.5490 12.8437

6 Conclusions
A modification in the DWT-based color image steganography approach has been used. The approach uses
blocking and secret key computation concepts. The blocking concept uses the least variation concept. The
secret key uses the concept of the detail coefficient of the DWT and the least error matching criteria. The
experimental results indicate that the modified approach provides better ST and secret images in terms of
PSNR. It helps us to provide better visual quality. Moreover, this approach does not require the original cover
image to extract the secret image.

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