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A novel chaotic steganography method with three approaches for color and grayscale images based on FIS and DCT with flexible capacity

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Abstract

In this paper, a new chaotic steganography method based on Fuzzy Inference System (FIS), using Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) on color and grayscale images is proposed. The proposed algorithm is designed in three different approaches to have important factors of robustness, imperceptibility, and transparency with respect to applications. In order to achieve this goal, important parameters in the Human Visual System (HVS), such as texture and luminance, using DCT coefficients are computed. For more precision and flexibility in selecting host blocks for embedding, FIS system is used. Due to the importance of robustness and transparency in different applications, the best target host blocks are intelligently determined using the degree defined in the fuzzy system. This flexibility greatly enhances the efficiency of the algorithm in various using goals. One of the outstanding aspects of the proposed method is error controlling with increasing capacity. At first, embedding is done on middle frequency (MF) then to increase the capacity, coefficients in high frequency are also considered with two different zigzag scanning directions in selection, middle to high (MHF) and high to middle (HMF). The ordering selection of different color channels (for color image), blocks, coefficients in embedding phase, and encryption algorithm of secret message are done by chaotic sequences which has a positive impact on security level. Providing an efficient integration technique (synchronization) in the number of coefficients of each block leads to increasing the security of the proposed method. One of best novelty which causes decreasing bit error rate (BER) beside increasing capacity, is approximating of the distortion during DCT and IDCT operations in embedding phase. The experimental results demonstrate that high level of transparency and robustness for MF, and if more capacity is needed, although both algorithms HMF and MHF have desirable results, but HMF provides higher level of transparency and MHF more robustness against noises and attacks which can be used with respect to applications.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Engineering, Imam Reza International University, Mashhad, Iran

    Mahboubeh Nazari & Iman Dorostkar Ahmadi

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  1. Mahboubeh Nazari
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  2. Iman Dorostkar Ahmadi
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Correspondence to Iman Dorostkar Ahmadi.

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Nazari, M., Dorostkar Ahmadi, I. A novel chaotic steganography method with three approaches for color and grayscale images based on FIS and DCT with flexible capacity. Multimed Tools Appl 79, 13693–13724 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-019-08415-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-019-08415-1

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