International Journal for Science and Emerging

ISSN No. (Online):2250-3641

Technologies with Latest Trends 6(1): 29-37 (2013)

ISSN No. (Print): 2277-8136

Transform Domain Analysis of Image Steganography

Gurmeet Kaur* and Aarti Kochhar**
*Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, CEM Kapurthala.
**Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, DAVIET Jalandhar
(Received 10 April 2013 Accepted 13 April 2013)

Abstract: Steganography is a means of data hiding in images for covert transmission. In recent years, Steganography
and Steganalysis are two important areas of research that involve a number of applications. These two areas of
research are important especially when reliable and secure information exchange is required. Steganography is an
art of embedding information in a cover image without causing statistically significant variations to the cover image.
Steganalysis is the technology that attempts to defeat Steganography by detecting the hidden information and
extracting. In this paper we propose an image Steganography that can verify the reliability of the information being
transmitted to the receiver. This paper is based on the comparison of the DCT and DWT method. This paper presents
a novel technique for Image steganography based on DWT, where DWT is used to transform original image (cover
image) from spatial domain to frequency domain. The experimental results show that the algorithm has a high
capacity and a good invisibility as compare to DCT. Moreover PSNR of cover image with stego-image shows the
better results in comparison with existing Steganography approaches. Also DWT method is best when we have to
increase the pay load capacity.
Index TermsSteganography, Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT).

usually applied for copyright protection. With

1. INTRODUCTION
The

growing

possibilities

of

modem

fingerprint, the owner of the data set embeds a

communications need the special means of

serial number that uniquely identifies him as the

security especially on computer network. The

owner. This adds to copyright information and

network security is becoming more important as

makes it possible to trace any unauthorized usage

the number of data being exchanged on the

of the data set. Steganography hides the secret

Internet increases. Therefore, the confidentiality

message within the host data set and its presence is

and data integrity are required to protect against

imperceptible and is to be reliably communicated

unauthorized access. This has resulted in an

to a receiver [1].

explosive growth of the field of information hiding

The word steganography comes

area, which encompasses applications such as

from the Greek Steganos, which means covered or

copyright

media,

secret and graphy means writing or drawing i.e.

Watermarking, fingerprinting, and Steganography.

Steganography means literally covered writing.

All these applications of information hiding are

With

quite diverse. In watermarking applications, the

Steganography can be used to carry out hidden

message contains information such as, owner

messages. The main goal of Steganography is to

protection

for

digital

identification and a digital time stamp, which is

the

existing

communication

methods,

30

Kaur and Kochhar

communicate

completely

least significant bit (in other words, the 8th bit) of

undetectable manner and to avoid drawing

some or all of the bytes inside an image is changed

suspicion to the transmission of a hidden data. If a

to a bit of the secret message.

Steganography method causes someone to suspect

Transform Domain Based Steganography:

there is secret information in a carrier medium,

Basically there are many kinds of power level

then the method become useless. Until recently,

transforms that exist to transfer an image to its

information hiding techniques received very much

frequency domain, some of which are Discrete

less attention from the research community and

Cosine Transform, KL Transform and Wavelet

from industry than cryptography. Cryptography

Transform.

and steganography are widely used in the field of

The Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT):

data hiding and has received significant attention

This method is used, but similar transforms are for

from both industry and academia in the recent

example the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT).

past. Former conceals the original data but latter

These mathematical transforms convert the pixels

conceals the very fact that data is hidden.

in such a way as to give the effect of spreading

Steganography provides high level of secrecy and

the location of the pixel values over part of the

security

image [5]. The DCT transforms a signal from an

by

securely

in

combining

with

cryptography.

Throughout history Steganography has been used

image

to secretly communicate information between

representation, by grouping the pixels into 8 8

people.

pixel blocks and transforming the pixel blocks into

2.
IMAGE
TECHNIQUES

STEGANOGRAPHY

representation

into

frequency

64 DCT.

The Two-Dimensional DCT

Based on the analyses of steganography tools

algorithms, we partition these tools into two
categories:

The 2-D DCT is a direct extension of the 1-D case

and is given by

Discrete Wavelet Transform

Wavelets are special functions which (in a form

Steganography:

analogous to sins and cosines in Fourier analysis)

Spatial steganography mainly includes LSB (Least

are used as basal functions for representing

Significant Bit) steganography Least significant

signals. The discrete wavelet transform (DWT) we

bit (LSB) insertion is a common, simple approach

applied here is Haar-DWT, the simplest DWT. In

to embedding information in a cover image. The

Haar-DWT the low frequency wavelet coefficient

Spatial

Domain

Based

Kaur and Kochhar

31

are generated by averaging the two pixel values

diagonal (HH) detail components as shown in

and high frequency coefficients are generated by

figure.

taking half of the difference of the same two

pixels. A signal is passed through a series of filters

Hao-tian Wu,

Huang [9] in steganographic

to calculate DWT. Procedure starts by passing this

algorithm is proposed for JPEG Image by

signal sequence through a half band digital low

modifying the block DCT coefficients. Firstly, an

pass filter with impulse response h (n).Filtering of

embedding algorithm called LSB+ matching is

a signal is numerically equal to convolution of the

generated to approximately preserve the marginal

tile signal with impulse response of the filter.

distribution of DC coefficients. We further divide

the DCT coefficients into four frequency bands,
including the direct current (DC), low frequency,
middle-frequency, and high-frequency. Via matrix
encoding,

A half band low pass filter removes all frequencies

low

data

hiding rate

and

high

embedding efficiency are achieved in high-

that are above half of the highest frequency in the

frequency band, while the hiding rate is increased

tile signal. Then the signal is passed through high

in the middle-frequency and DC bands, and

highest in the low-frequency band. In addition, a

pass filter.The two filters are related to each other

as

coefficient selection strategy is employed to make

the hidden message less detectable. The proposed
algorithm is implemented on a set of 10000
images

and

tested

with

four

steganalytic

algorithms.
Mamta Juneja, Parvinder Singh Sandhu [11]
represented

Robust

image

steganography

technique based on LSB (Least Significant Bit)

insertion

and

RSA

encryption

technique.

Steganography is the term used to describe the

hiding of data in images to avoid detection by
attackers.

Steganalysis is the method used by

For 2-D images, applying DWT (Discrete Wavelet

attackers to determine if images have hidden data

Transform) separates the image into a lower

and to recover that data. The application discussed

resolution approximation image or band (LL) as

in this paper ranks images in a users library based

well as horizontal (HL), vertical (LH) and

on their suitability as cover objects for some data.

By matching data to an image, there is less chance

32

Kaur and Kochhar

of an attacker being able to use steganalysis to

information should be embedded in such a manner

recover the data. Before hiding the data in an

that there are no significant changes in the

image the application first encrypts it. The

statistical properties of the cover image.

steganography method proposed in this paper and

(ii)Stegoimage: It is a unified image obtained by

illustrated by the application is superior to that

the combination of the payload and cover image.

used by current Steganography tools.

(iii)Perceptibility: It describes the ability of a

Yi-zhen Chen, Zhi Han, Shu-ping Li, Chun-hui

third party (not the intended recipient) to visually

Lu, Xiao-Hui Yao [13] an improved adaptive

detect the presence of hidden information in the

steganography

stego

algorithmSVBA

algorithm,

image.

The

embedding algorithm is

which fully analyzes the statistical properties and

imperceptible when used on a particular image if

adopts HVS features. SVBA algorithm first

an innocent third party, interested in the content of

divides the image into 8*8 blocks and analyzes the

the cover image, is unaware of the existence of the

mean, variance and entropy value of grey by

payload.

block, then sets a sensitivity vector for each block

embedding process not degrade the visual quality

with considering HVS features and adjusts the

of the cover image.

steganography schema dynamically according to

(iv)Robustness: It characterizes the ability of the

the

payload to survive the embedding and extraction

block

sensitivity

experiment
algorithm

results
has

efficiency,

vectors.

onMatlab7.0
balanced

capacity,

Simulation
shows

this

requires

that

the

this

process, even in the face of manipulations of the

on

stego image such as filtering, cropping, rotating

performance

imperceptibility

Essentially

and

robustness. Mohammad Javad Khosravi, Samaneh

Ghandali [20] novel steganography technique
based on the combination of a secret sharing
method and wavelet transform is presented. In this
method, a secret image is shared into some shares.
Then, the shares and Fletcher- 16checksum of
shares are hidden into cover images using an
integer wavelet based Steganography technique.

and compression.

(v)Security: It is inability of adversary to detect

hidden images accessible only to the authorized
user. The quality factor can enhance the security
of the image. A steganographic image is perfectly
secure when statistical data of the cover and stego
images are identical

B. Error Analysis:
(i) Bit Error Rate: For the successful recovery
of the hidden information the communication

3. MODEL
A. Definitions
(i)Cover image: It is defined as the original
image into which the required information is
embedded. It is also termed as carrier image. The

channel

must

be

ideal

but

for

the

real

communication channel, there will be error while

retrieving hidden information and this is measured

Kaur and Kochhar

by BER. The cover image is represented as cov
and stego image as steg in the given equation

33

Algorithm to retrieve text message:Step 1: Read stego image

Step 2: Stego image is broken into
88 block of pixels.
Step 3:Working from left to right, top to bottom

Where i is the pixel position

(ii) Mean Square Error: It is defined as the square
of error between cover image and the stego image.
The distortion in the image can be measured using
MSE.

subtract 128 in each block of

pixels.
Step 4: DCT is applied to each block.
Step5:Each

block

is

compressed

through

quantization table.
Step6:Calculate LSB of each DCT coefficient.

(iii) Peak Signal to Noise Ratio: It is the ratio of

the maximum signal to noise in the stego image.

4. ALGORITHMS OF STEGANOGRAPHY
A.DCT Based Steganography
Algorithm to embed text message:Step 1: Read cover image.
Step 2: Read secret message and convert it in
binary.
Step 3: The cover image is broken into 88 block
of pixels.
Step 4: Working from left to right, top to bottom
subtract 128 in each block of pixels.
Step 5: DCT is applied to each block.
Step

6:Each

block

is

compressed

through

quantization table.
Step 7: Calculate LSB of each DC coefficient and
replace with each bit of secret message.
Step 8: Write stego image.

Fig(a) Original Desert Image and Stego image

34

Kaur and Kochhar

Fig (b) Histogram Analysis of Original image

and Stego Image

Fig (d) Histogram Analysis of Original image

and Stego Image
B. Wavelet Based Steganography
Algorithm to embed text message
Step 1: Read cover image.
Step 2: Read secret key and convert it in binary.
Step 3: Perform the DWT and convert the image
into four sub bands.
Step 4: Embed the secret key by changing the LSB
of the each sub band
Step 5: Generate the stego image.
Algorithm to retrieve text message:Step 1: Read stego image.
Step 2: Calculate the IDWT.

Fig(c)
image

Original Jellyfish Image and Stego

Step 3: Retrieve the message

Kaur and Kochhar

Fig(a) Original Jellyfish Image and Stego image

Fig(c)
image

35

Original Jellyfish Image and Stego

+
Fig (b) Histogram Analysis of Original image
and Stego Image

Fig (d) Histogram Analysis of Original image

and Stego Image

36

Kaur and Kochhar

5 PERFORMANCE & RESULTS

REFERENCES
The analysis of DCT based and DWT based
Steganography has been done on basis of
parameters like PSNR, MSE, Processing time,
capacity. PSNR computes the peak signal to noise
ratio, in decibels, between two images. This ratio
is used as a quality measurement between two

[1] Anil K Jain, Fundamentals of Digital Image

Processing, University of California-Davis,
Prentice Hall, 1988
[2] Ken Cabeen and Peter Gent, Image
Compression and Discrete Cosine Transform,
College
of
Redwoods.
http://online.redwoods.cc.ca.us/instruct/darnold/L
APROJ/Fall98/PKen/dct.pdf

images. If PSNR ratio is high then images are best

of quality. Capacity is used to calculate the no of
bits that can be embedded in the cover image.
Processing time is the time taken by the MATLAB
Software to execute the program.
Method Picture
name

DCT
(8X8)
DCT(8
X8)
DWT

PSN MS
R
E

DESER
T

37. 11.
54 45
JELLT
39. 7.5
FISH
35 4
DESER 49. 0.6
T
76 8
JELLY
DWT
49. 0.6
FISH
85 7
Table1: Simulation results

PROCES
SING
TIME
(seconds)

Capacity(
Bits)

1.95

24576

1.63

24576

1.40

524288

1.25

524288

for DCT & DWT

[3] Chang, C.C., Chen, T.S. and Chung, L.Z., A

steganographic method based upon JPEG and
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Image
Steganography
Microprocessor
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Science,Bangalore

Method
6. CONCLUSION
The Steganography is covert communication to
protect confidential information. Here we
presented a comparative study of DCT and the
DWT Methods. Both come under transform
domain analysis. Both the methods have good
imperceptibility and also Robustness against
statistical attacks. But as we know the major aim
of the Steganography is to increase the robustness
against attacks and also to increase the payload
capacity. Our proposed method increases both the
PSNR and also the capacity which is less in DCT
Method.

[7] Proceedings of the 2006 International

Conference on Intelligent Information Hiding
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Ebrahimian, A new method for color image
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Computer Technology and Development, IEEE,
2008
[9] CHEN Zhi-li, HUANG Liu-sheng, YU Zhenshan, LI Ling-jun and YANG wei, A Statistical
Algorithm for Linguistic Steganography Detection
Based on Distribution of Words, 3RD International

Kaur and Kochhar

Conference on Availability,
Security, IEEE, 2008. .

Reliability

and

[10] K Suresh Babu, K B Raja, Kiran Kumar K,

Manjula Devi T H, Venugopal K R, L M Patnaik,
Authentication of Secret Information in Image
Steganography Microprocessor Applications
Laboratory, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
in 2008
[11] Mamta Juneja Parvinder Singh Sandhu,
Designing of Robust Image Steganography
Technique Based on LSB Insertion and
Encryption 2009 International Conference on
Advances
in
Recent
Technologies
in
Communication and Computing.
[12] KokSheik Wong, Xiaojun Qi, and Kiyoshi
Tanaka, A DCT based Mod4 Steganography
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Lu, Xiao- Hui Yao , An Adaptive
Steganography Algorithm Based on Block
Sensitivity Vectors Using HVS Features 2010
3rd International Congress on Image and Signal
Processing.
[14] James Cane, TheoYi- zhen Chen, Zhi Han,
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Adaptive Steganography Algorithm Based on
Block Sensitivity Vectors Using HVS Feature
2010 3rd International Congress on Image and
Signal Processing.

37

[15]. Adel Almohammad, Gheorghita Ghinea,

Image
Steganography and Chrominance
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