Adaptive block-based pixel value differencing steganography

Steganography is the science of hiding secure data in digital carriers such as images and videos. Pixel value differencing (PVD) steganography algorithms embed data into images depending on pixel neighborhood differences. We have proposed PVD scheme for embedding secure data into digital images. The image is divided into non-overlapping 3x3 blocks. The block's median pixel is used as a reference for calculating pixel differences. The distance between the minimum and maximum differences are fine tuned for spreading the secure data on a wide range of image regions with high-intensity fluctuations. The embedding procedure embeds secure data into the content regions with edges and intensity transitions. Texture images provide higher embedding size compared with regular images. The results showed that the proposed algorithm is successfully able to avoid smooth regions in the embedding process. In addition, the proposed algorithm shows better embedding quality compared with the state of the art PVD approaches especially with low-embedding rates. Copyright (C) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.