Publication

Abstract : This paper proposes an improved image steganographic technique based on the principle of modified least significant bit (LSB) substitution and LSB matching, to improve the capacity and peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR). The proposed technique has been divided into 3 variants such as variant-1, variant-2, and variant-3. A block consisting of 2 pixels has been considered for data embedding in all the three variants. The variant-1 initially uses the 6th and 7th bit to hide 2 bits of secret data in the first pixel of a block. Further modification to the pixel is done by ±1 or 0 in order to hide 2 more bits in a block. Similarly, the variant-2 hides 3 bits and variant-3 hides 2 bits respectively in a block. The experimental results prove that the variant-1 offers better capacity whereas variant-3 offers better peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR). The results with respect to the steganographic parameters such as embedding capacity, PSNR, and the universal image quality index (Q) has been presented and it is found that the performance of the proposed technique is superior compared to existing techniques.