An innovative information hiding technique utilizing cumulative peak histogram regions

• Published in: Journal of systems and information technology Vol. 14; no. 4; pp. 336 - 352
• Main Authors: Al-Omari, Faruq A, Al-Khaleel, Osama D, Rayyashi, Ghassan A, Ghwanmeh, Sameh H
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bingley Emerald Group Publishing Limited 09.11.2012
• Subjects: Algorithms; Awards & honors; Computer information security; Data compression; Digital watermarks; Histograms; Information systems; Layouts; Messages; Payloads; Security management; Signal processing; Statistics; Studies; Wavelet transforms; Steganography; Data security; Information security; Watermarking; Data encapsulation; Information hiding; Information management; Programming and algorithm theory
• ISSN: 1328-7265; 1758-8847
• DOI: 10.1108/13287261211279071

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to develop an innovative information hiding algorithm.Design methodology approach - The proposed algorithm is based on image histogram statistics. Cumulative-peak histogram regions are utilized to hide multiple bits of the secret message by performing histogram bin substitution. The embedding capacity, otherwise known as payload, and peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), as well as security, are the main metrics used to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm.Findings - According to the obtained results, the proposed algorithm shows high embedding capacity and security at comparable PSNR compared with existing hiding information techniques.Originality value - The simplicity, security, random distribution of embedding pixels, and on-demand high capacity are the key advantages of the proposed approach.