Steganography for BTC compressed images using no distortion technique

Abstract

In this paper, we proposed an improved data hiding scheme to embed secret data in the compressed bitstreams where the quality of the image is maintained even after embedment. The difference in the quantized values for each block is used to determine whether only 1 bit of secret is to be hidden for the block or to toggle bits in the bitmap to hide more bits. The scheme has a high payload and is a no distortion data hiding. Experimental tests with Lena showed that in the 2 × 2 block-sized BTC compressed bitstreams, an additional 10 488 bits were embedded and 416 bits for the 4 × 4 block-sized. The new improved scheme increases payload and is reversible.