Steganography is an important area of research in recent years involving a number of applications. It is the science of embedding information into the cover image viz., text, video, and image (payload) without causing statistically significant modification to the cover image. The modern secure image steganography presents a challenging task of transferring the embedded information to the destination without being detected. In this paper we present an image based steganography that combines Least Significant Bit(LSB), Discrete Cosine Transform(DCT), and compression techniques on raw images to enhance the security of the payload. Initially, the LSB algorithm is used to embed the payload bits into the cover image to derive the stego-image. The stego-image is transformed from spatial domain to the frequency domain using DCT. Finally quantization and runlength coding algorithms are used for compressing the stego-image to enhance its security. It is observed that secure images with low MSE and BER are transferred without using any password, in comparison with earlier works.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.