A Novel Image Hiding Scheme Using Content Aware Seam Carving Method

Abstract

In image hiding we embed a secret image into a cover image. In order to minimize the distortion of secret image, we presented a novel steganographic method based on content-aware seam carving. In this paper, we propose a new image hiding method in which, the secret image is initially classified based on image complexity measure. Then it is resized to an appropriate smaller size, but for having the important objects of the image in resized image we use seam carving method that resizes an image whereas the important content of it remains. By applying the seam carving, we have an image that is smaller than the original one, and then we hide it in a cover image. Obviously hiding a smaller secret image causes less distortion in the stego-image (the image that has secret image or data) and therefore higher quality stego-image is obtained. Consequently, the proposed method provides higher embedding rate and enhanced security. The image quality of stego-image is measured in terms of peak-signal-to-noise ratio. In addition its robustness against noise and compression is evaluated.