An Efficient Method for Image and Audio Steganography using Least Significant Bit (LSB) Substitution
This addresses steganography for multimedia data, but it is incremental as it builds on existing LSB and transform methods.
The paper tackled the problem of hiding data in images and audio to make messages imperceptible, achieving a visually indistinguishable stego-image from the original when using up to 4 bits with improved PSNR.
In order to improve the data hiding in all types of multimedia data formats such as image and audio and to make hidden message imperceptible, a novel method for steganography is introduced in this paper. It is based on Least Significant Bit (LSB) manipulation and inclusion of redundant noise as secret key in the message. This method is applied to data hiding in images. For data hiding in audio, Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) both are used. All the results displayed prove to be time-efficient and effective. Also the algorithm is tested for various numbers of bits. For those values of bits, Mean Square Error (MSE) and Peak-Signal-to-Noise-Ratio (PSNR) are calculated and plotted. Experimental results show that the stego-image is visually indistinguishable from the original cover-image when n<=4, because of better PSNR which is achieved by this technique. The final results obtained after steganography process does not reveal presence of any hidden message, thus qualifying the criteria of imperceptible message.