Hybrid Curvelet Transform and Least Significant Bit for image steganography

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new hybrid method for image steganography by using discrete curvelet transform and least significant bit (LSB). The proposed method is called Hybrid Curvelet Transform and Least Significant Bit (HCTLSB). In HCTLSB, the curvelet denoising is applied as a preprocessing step in order to remove the noise from the cover image. The cover image is transformed by applying the discreet curvelet transform before embedding the secret data by using LSB technique. Invoking the curvelet transform in the proposed method can handle the curve discontinuities in the cover image to obtain a better quality and robustness image. The LSB technique is applied on the obtained discrete curvelet coefficients image to embed the secret data without making noticeable changes to the cover image. The general performance of the proposed method is tested on 10 cover and secret images and compared against two benchmark methods. The experimental results show that the proposed method is a promising method and can obtain results better than the other compared methods.