Data hiding in virtual bit-plane using efficient Lucas number sequences

This paper introduces a steganography technique using the concept of virtual bit-plane. Purposely another number system has been used in this technique instead of binary to hide the target data. After that embedding of target data is done on different bit-planes. Here for conversion, Lucas Number system is used. The Lucas sequence is almost similar to Fibonacci, instead 1 and 2 it starts with 2 and 1. It helps to increase robustness by embedding data at the second bit-plane with a slight change of +/- 1. Here for embedding target data, Blue and Green channels of RGB color image are used. Red channel is used as indicator for proper extraction of target data at the receiver side. The indicator is used to avoid lexicographically higher order to consider for number representation. It may seem that the use of two channels for embedding reduces the capacity. But it does not really happen. The skip of pixel to follow Zekendrof's rule for handling redundant representation by other existing methods, make the proposed one more capacitive than other. In order to establish its efficiency over the state-of-art-works the proposed method is analyzed by using different parameters and compared with relevant techniques. It has been found from the tested result that the proposed one is better. The stego quality of the method is also maintained along with the robustness and capacity. The PSNR of the proposed method is within the acceptable range, even in the highest embedding capacity.