Multimed Tools Appl

DOI 10.1007/s11042-014-2059-2

High payload image steganography with minimum

distortion based on absolute moment block truncation
coding

Duanhao Ou · Wei Sun

Received: 7 December 2013 / Revised: 18 April 2014 / Accepted: 27 April 2014

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Abstract This paper presents an improved image steganography scheme based on abso-
lute moment block truncation coding (AMBTC). The purpose of the proposed scheme is to
achieve high payload, good visual quality and low computation complexity at the same time.
In the scheme, a threshold is predefined to classify the blocks of the AMBTC-compressed
codes as smooth or complex blocks, in which data are then embedded. For the smooth
blocks, the bit planes of them are used to embed the data. Later, the two quantization lev-
els in the smooth block are re-calculated to minimize the distortion in image quality. For
the complex blocks, a proportion of secret bits are concealed by exchanging the order of
two quantization levels with together toggling the bit plane, by which the payload can be
increased without any distortion. Furthermore, the proposed scheme inherits the advan-
tages of the AMBTC method, such as pleasing image quality, ease to be implemented and
low computational complexity. With adjustable threshold, the application of the proposed
scheme becomes flexible, that means different thresholds can be used for different applica-
tions. Experimental results and analysis demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the
proposed scheme.

Keywords Steganography · Smooth block · Minimum distortion · High payload ·

Absolute moment block truncation coding

D. Ou ()
School of Information Science and Technology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510006, China
e-mail: ouduanh@mail2.sysu.edu.cn,ouduanhao@163.com

W. Sun
School of Software, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510006, China

W. Sun ()
State Key Laboratory of Information Security, Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy
of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China
e-mail: sunwei@mail.sysu.edu.cn
 Multimed Tools Appl

1 Introduction

With the development of communication technologies, digital data are widely distributed
and transmitted via the internet more conveniently. However, distributing the sensitive or
important data, such as those used by the military or by commercial businesses, over the
public network makes them vulnerable to be attacked. Therefore, protection of sensitive
data becomes a critical issue in recent years. To protect transmitted data from being inter-
cepted or tampered, some techniques have been developed. Cryptography is an intuitional
way to protect the sensitive data, where the sensitive data are encrypted into a set of unread-
able codes by using traditional cryptographical methods, such as DES and RSA. By this
method, only the legal receiver with a key can decrypt and access the secret data, whereas
the illegal one without a key cannot obtain any information about the secret. However,
the meaningless encrypted codes may cause the suspicion from the invader on covert
communication. For the aim of addressing the meaningless problem, an alternative
approach, called steganography, has been proposed to protect the sensitive data without
attracting the invaders’ attention. By the steganography, the sensitive data are embedded into
a cover carrier to conceal the existence of secret information, which can be then detected and
extracted by the legal receiver. As we known, digital images have high degree of redundancy,
where data can be embedded with little visual distortion. Moreover, images are widely trans-
mitted via the internet, so that they usually arouse less suspicion than other digital media
[26]. Hence, the digital images are suitable to be adopted as cover carriers for the steganog-
raphy. Generally, images used as carriers to contain the secret information are referred as
cover images, while images with secret information embedded are called stego images.
In general, image steganography techniques can be roughly classified into two cate-
gories: (1) the spatial domain scheme, and (2) the frequency domain scheme. In the spatial
domain scheme, secret data are embedded into the pixels by directly modifying the image
pixels in the spatial domain. A typical spatial domain approach [4] usually hides the secret
data into the least-significant bits (LSBs) of each pixel in the cover image. The LSB
approach only slightly changes the original pixels without introducing obvious perceptible
distortion to the original images, thus hiding data in them is difficult to be visually detected.
Indeed, the discovery of the LSB approach is a big achievement that it is easy to be imple-
mented and involves low computational cost. Hence, the LSB approach has gained wide
interest, and its research issues, such as payload or distortion topics, have been done widely
[3, 24, 25]. However, the stego images generated by the spatial domain scheme are generally
in uncompressed format. When transmitting these uncompressed stego images via the Inter-
net, they may cause suspicions from the invaders, because most digital images transmitted
over the Internet are generally in compressed format, such as JPEG [5], vector quantization
(VQ) [15] and block truncation coding (BTC) [13]. In the frequency domain scheme, the
cover images must first be transformed into frequency coefficients by utilizing a frequency-
oriented mechanism such as discrete Fourier transformation (DFT) [2], discrete cosine
transformation (DCT)[18] or discrete wavelet transformation (DWT) [11]. Subsequently,
secret data are combined with the relative coefficients. Lastly, the modified coefficients are
used to reconstruct the frequency-form image as a stego image. The data extraction process
is an inverse process of the embedding process. The frequency domain scheme can resist
attack as compared to the spatial domain scheme, but the frequency domain scheme often
suffers from high computation complexity and the problem of uncompressed stego images
still exists. To overcome the above problems, some compressed domain schemes are pro-
posed [12, 28], where the data are directly embedded into the compressed codes. Later, the
Multimed Tools Appl

stego image can be decoded from the stego compressed codes by using the original decoding
procedure of the related compressed method. In the compressed domain scheme, the pro-
cesses of data embedding and data extraction do not involve transforming to the frequency
domain, the computation cost is thus relatively low as compared to the frequency domain
scheme. Further, the compressed stego images can improve the efficiency of data transmis-
sion, and reduce suspicion from the invaders on image covert communications. Therefore,
we focus on techniques for image steganography based on compressed domain in this paper.
Block truncation coding (BTC) is a simple lossy image compression method. BTC has
many advantages such as efficiency, low computational cost and ease to implement. Due to
its advantages, BTC or BTC-liked methods have gained wide interest in their further devel-
opment, including image compression [16, 17], image security [33] and image authenication
[21]. Recently, although some image steganography schemes have been also done in BTC
or BTC-liked compressed images, most of them suffer from small payload or low visual
quality which lead to the limitation of the application. In 2008, Hong et al. [19] embed data
by exchanging two quantization levels with together toggling the corresponding bit plane.
Their scheme can achieve the reversibility without additional storage cost. The reversible
scheme can recover the secret data and the cover image without distortion at the same time,
but there exists some problem to extract the secret data when two quantization levels are
equal. To overcome the problem existing in Hong et al.’s scheme, Chen et al. [10] presented
an improved scheme where data are also embedded into the bit planes with two same quan-
tization levels. Further, the payload of the Chen et al.’s scheme has been enhanced slightly
as compared to the Hong et al.’s scheme. To extend the application, Chang et al. [8] pro-
posed a reversible image steganography aiming at BTC-compressed color images. Different
from related reversible schemes [6, 7, 9, 29], the proposed reversible schemes mentioned
above have low computational complexity and do not require additional storage cost. Other
reversible data hiding schemes based on difference-expansion have been reported in [1, 20,
22, 30], which can provide high capacity while preserving high image quality. However,
these schemes require extra storage to achieve the reversibility, such as a location map or
the storage for dealing with overflow and underflow, which would cause suspicion from the
invaders. In addition, their stego images with secret data embedded are in uncompressed
image format, which may increase the capacity of transfer and storage. Moreover, due to the
reversibility of the above-mentioned schemes, the payload of them is relatively low. Though
the reversible schemes are very important for some specific applications in military, medical
and forensic areas, they usually suffer from the low payload which leads to the limitation
of their applications. In 2006, chuang et al. [12] proposed a BTC-based image steganogra-
phy scheme with high payload. The scheme is irreversible, that is, the original cover image
cannot be restored completely from the stego image, but it can achieve high payload as
compared to the reversible scheme. In their scheme, a threshold is predefined to classify the
type of each block as smooth or complex. Subsequently, secret data are embedded into the
bit planes of the smooth blocks in which two quantization levels are similarly. When the
threshold is higher, more bits may be embedded, but the visual quality of the stego image
will degrade significantly that may increase the suspicions from the invaders and lead to
failure in the steganography.
As the problems mentioned above, this paper presents an improved image steganography
scheme, where the data are directly embedded into the compressed codes which is con-
structed by the absolute moment block truncation coding (AMBTC). The main purpose of
the proposed scheme is to achieve high payload, good visual quality and low computational
complexity at the same time. In this scheme, the threshold is also predefined to classify
 Multimed Tools Appl

the blocks as smooth or complex blocks. Different with Chuang et al.’s scheme [12], both
smooth blocks and complex blocks are employed as carries to embed the data, so that the
payload can be enhanced. When data are embedded into the smooth blocks, the visual qual-
ity of the related reconstructed image block may be with more or loss distortion. Especially,
as the threshold is increased for enhancing the payload, the visual quality would be dis-
torted significantly that may lead to failure in the steganography. When the data have been
embedded in a smooth block, the two quantization levels of the smooth block would be re-
calculated to minimize the distortion between the stego image block and the normal image
block, thus the visual quality can be improved. On the other hand, the complex blocks are
also used for embedding the data, which is not done in Chuang et al.’s scheme. One bit can
be embedded in each of complex blocks by exchanging the two quantization levels together
with toggling the related bit plane, such an embedding strategy can increase the payload
without introducing any distortion in image quality. With the adjustable threshold, the trade-
off among image distortion and payload varies from application to application. Thus, the
application of the proposed scheme becomes flexible, that means different threshold val-
ues can be used for different applications. For example, when the value of threshold is less
enough to let all blocks be classified as the complex blocks, e.g., the threshold is set to 0,
our scheme is reduced to a reversible scheme where the stego images are exactly the same
as the normal AMBTC-compressed images. For the security purpose, cryptographic tech-
niques can be employed in our image steganography scheme to make secret communications
more secure. For instance, secret data can be encrypted by using traditional cryptographic
techniques before performing the embedding procedure. Note that, any one can decode the
AMBTC compressed image from stego compression codes by using the original decoding
procedure of the AMBTC method. This criterion is very important, because if the illegal
receivers cannot decode the compressed image using the original decoding procedure of the
AMBTC method, they may develop a suspicion and start detecting the secret data.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, the AMBTC compres-
sion technique is briefly reviewed. The proposed image steganography scheme based on
AMBTC is introduced in Section 3. The experimental results and analysis are given in
Section 4, and finally some conclusions are stated in Section 5.

2 AMBTC compression algorithm

BTC is a simple and efficient lossy image compression method [13]. Due to its low compu-
tational cost, the BTC method is suitable for the real-time application and the less powerful
processing application, such as the Arm-based application. The main idea of the BTC
method is to quantize the pixels in each block into two levels while preserving certain sta-
tistical moments of small blocks of the grey-level image, so that the visual quality of the
BTC-compressed image can remain acceptable. Later, the AMBTC method, which is a
variant of BTC, was presented by Lema and Mitchell [23] to further improve the perfor-
mance of the traditional BTC technique. The AMBTC method is computationally simpler
than the BTC method while preserving the first absolute moment along with the mean. The
major difference between AMBTC and BTC is the calculation of the two quantization lev-
els during the encoding procedure. However, the image decoding procedure of the AMBTC
method is the same as that of the traditional BTC method. The details of the image encoding
procedure of the AMBTC method are described as follows.
During the encoding procedure of AMBTC, the input image is first partitioned into a set
of non-overlapping blocks of M pixels. Then, each block I Bi can be compressed by using
Multimed Tools Appl

two quantization levels ai and bi , and one bit plane Bi . For the block I Bi , the the mean
value x and two quantization levels ai and bi are calculated as follows:
1 
M
x = xi , (1)
M
i=1
1 
ai = xi , (2)
M −q
xi <x
1 
bi = xi , (3)
q
xi ≥x

where xi indicates the i th pixel value of the block, M represents the total number of pixels
in the block, and q denotes the number of pixels whose grey-level is greater than or equal
to the mean value x. The bit plane Bi , is also used to represent the pixels. For the block
I Bi , when the pixel value is greater than or equal to x, it is set to 1, otherwise, it is set to 0.
During the decompression process, two quantization levels ai and bi , and one bit plane Bi
are required to reconstruct image block.
Assume that two quantization levels ai and bi requires 8 bits, and the bit plane Bi of
the block requires M bits. For a 4 × 4 block, the total number of bits required is (8 +
8 + 4 × 4) = 32 bits. Thus, the compression rate of the AMBTC method is (8 + 8 +
4 × 4)/16 = 2bpp, which is the same as that of the traditional BTC method. As stated in
[23], the AMBTC method preserves the first absolute moment along with the mean instead
of using the standard deviation in the BTC method, so that the AMBTC method does not
require complex computation as compared to the BTC method.

3 The proposed image steganography based on AMBTC

In this paper, a high payload image steganography with minimum distortion based on
AMBTC is presented. The goal of the proposed scheme is to achieve high payload, good
visual quality and low computational complexity at the same time. For the security pur-
pose, secret data are usually encrypted by traditional cryptographic techniques with a key
before being embedded. The smooth blocks of the AMBTC-compressed codes are mainly
used to embed the bits from the encrypted data. When the encrypted data are embedded into
smooth blocks, the image visual quality may be with more or less distortion. To improve the
visual quality, the two quantization levels of the smooth blocks would be re-calculated to
minimize the distortion in image quality. Furthermore, for a complex block of the AMBTC-
compressed codes, we embed one bit by exchanging the order of two quantization levels
with together toggling the related bit planes. The embedding strategy designed for the com-
plex blocks can further increase the payload of the proposed scheme without introducing
any distortion. During the decompression process, any one can decode the grey-level image
from the stego compressed codes by using the original decoding procedure of the AMBTC
method.

3.1 Stego-image construction

The dealer receives secret data and an original grey-level image with 8 bits per pixel. For
the security purpose, the secret data are encrypted with a key before being embedded. In the
following, we construct a stego image with the encrypted data embedded, where the stego
image is in AMBTC-compressed format.
 Multimed Tools Appl

First, the original grey-level image is divided into non-overlapping blocks with k ×k pix-
els. For each block I Bi , two quantization levels ai and bi can be computed by using Eqs. 2
and 3, respectively. Second, the block I Bi is classified as a smooth block or a complex
block by a threshold and two quantization levels ai and bi . The absolute difference value of
two quantization levels ai and bi in the block I Bi is computed as follows:
di = |ai − bi | (4)

The predefined threshold value thr is used to compare with the value of di . If di > thr,
then I Bi is classified as a complex block; otherwise, the block is classified as a smooth
block. After grouping for the image block is completed, the data are concealed in different
type blocks by using different strategies.
For each complex block, one bit s1 from the encrypted data can be embedded by toggling
or preserving the bit plane. If s1 is equal to 1, the related bit plane is toggled and the two
quantization levels are exchanged, such that let the original compressed codes (ai , bi , Bi )
be transformed to (bi , ai , Bi ), where Bi is the result of performing logical NOT operation
on the bit plane Bi ; otherwise, no operation is needed and the original compressed codes
(ai , bi , Bi ) maintains unchanged. As described in [19], the interchange of the two quantiza-
tion levels together with preforming logical NOT operation on the bit plane does not change
the value of the reconstructed image. Hence, the above strategy designed for the complex
block provides the reversibility, that means the visual quality of the stego block introduces
no distortion as compared to the original image block by the AMBTC method. It can further
increase the payload of the proposed scheme without introducing any distortion in image
quality.
For each smooth block, k × k bits from the encrypted data can be embedded in the
locations of the bit plane. In a smooth block, if the two quantization levels are highly similar,
the bit plane is less significant. Thus, the locations of the bit plane can be replaced to contain
the embedded bits. The above strategy designed for the smooth block introduces more or
less distortion in the image quality after the bit plane replacement. As we known, the visual
quality of the stego image is an important performance for the steganography method. The
better visual quality the stego image has, the more secure the steganography method will be.
However, the low visual quality may cause suspicions from the invaders and lead to failure
in the steganography. To obtain better steganography for the proposed scheme, when the bit
plane of a smooth block has been replaced with the secret bits, the two quantization levels
in the smooth block would be re-calculated to minimize the distortion. After the bit plane
replacement, the pixels in the original image block I Bi can be classified into two groups
according to the new bit plane B  i with bits embedded. If the bit value in B  i is equal to 0,
its corresponding pixel in image block I Bi is classified as the first group (G0 ); otherwise,
its corresponding pixel is classified as the second group (G1 ). In our method, Di is used to
measure the distortion between the original image block and the stego reconstructed block
with bits embedded. Assume that the two re-calculated quantization levels of the smooth
block I Bi are respectively a  i and b i , and the distortion Di between the original image
block and the stego reconstructed block can be computed by:
1  
Di = ( (xi − a  i )2 + (xi − b i )2 ), (5)
M
xi ∈G0 xi ∈G1

where xi indicates the i th pixel value of the original image block I Bi , M indicates the total
number of pixels in the block. To obtain the best visual quality of the stego reconstructed
block, two new quantization levels, a  i and b i , should be determined to minimize the dis-
Multimed Tools Appl

tortion Di . The first and second partial derivatives of Di with respect to the variable a  i and
b i are calculated as follows:
∂Di 2 
= − (xi − a  i ), (6)
∂a  i M
xi ∈G0
∂Di 2 

=− (xi − b i ), (7)
∂b i M
xi ∈G1

∂ 2 Di 2 
= 1, (8)
∂a  2i M
xi ∈G0

∂ 2 Di 2 
= 1. (9)
∂b 2i M
xi ∈G1

∂ 2 Di ∂2D
Since > 0 and > 0, the minimum of Di occurs where its first partial derivatives
∂a  2i ∂b 2i
with respect to the variable a  i and b i are zero. Set the first partial derivatives ∂Di
∂a  i = 0,
∂Di
∂b i = 0, and yield the system of equations as follows:
∂Di 2 
=− (xi − ai ) = 0, (10)
∂ai M
xi ∈G0
∂Di 2 
 =− (xi − bi ) = 0. (11)
∂bi M
xi ∈G1

The above two equations will yield:

1  1 
ai =  xi = xi , (12)
xi ∈G0 1 M −q
xi ∈G0 xi ∈G0
1  1 
bi =  xi = xi , (13)
xi ∈G1 1 q
xi ∈G1 xi ∈G1

where  q = xi ∈G 1
1 indicates the number of pixels whose value is equal to 1 in Bi , and
M = ( xi ∈G0 1 + xi ∈G1 1) indicates the total number of pixels in Bi . The two calculated
quantization levels, ai and bi , would be used as new quantization levels in the smooth block
I Bi to minimize the distortion of the original block and the stego reconstructed block. Thus,
the visual quality of the stego reconstructed block can be improved.
Note that, the two new quantization levels ai and bi must determine the same smoothness
property as two old quantization levels ai and bi . If the smoothness property of the block is
changed, such that |ai − bi | ≤ thr is transformed to |ai − bi | > thr, it may lead misjudge-
ment to extract the embedded data by the receiver. The receiver will make the misjudgement
that the related block is complex and no bit has been embedded into its corresponding bit
plane. Therefore, to avoid this misjudgement and guarantee that all the embedded bits can
be extracted successfully, in this special case, we still use the old quantization levels ai and
bi instead of the new quantization levels ai and bi for the smooth block.
Assume that the encrypted data is a bit sequence S: S = {S(i) | S(i) ∈ {0, 1}, i =
1, 2, 3, · · · , Len}. Then, an N × N original grey-level image I is selected to construct the
stego AMBTC-compressed image in which the bit sequence S has been embedded. Without
loss of generality, the block size is set to 4 × 4. The detailed procedure of constructing the
stego-image is described in Algorithm 1.
 Multimed Tools Appl

Algorithm 1 (Construct the stego image with encrypted data embedded)

Input: A bit sequence S, an N × N original grey-scale images I and a parameter thr.

Output: A stego AMBTC-compressed codes Is .

1: Is = ∅.
2: Divide the input grey-scale image I into non-overlapping 4 × 4 blocks.
3: From left to right and top to bottom, each block I Bi of the image I is processed
by the AMBTC method [23], and the two quantization levels ai and bi , and one bit
plane Bi can be obtained.
4: Compute the absolute difference value di of two quantization levels ai and bi , such
that di = |ai − bi |.
5: If di > thr, the block I Bi is classified as a complex block, in which one bit s1
from S can be embedded. If s1 is equal to 1, the bit plane Bi is toggled and the
two quantization levels are exchanged, such that let the original compressed codes
(ai , bi , Bi ) be transformed to (bi , ai , Bi ). Then, add (bi , ai , Bi ) into Is . If s1 is equal
to 0, no operation is needed and add the original compressed codes (ai , bi , Bi ) into
Is . Finally, delete s1 from S and go back to Step 3 to handle the next unprocessed
block.
6: If di ≤ thr, the block I Bi is classified as a smooth block, in which 16 bits s2 from
S can be embedded. The embedding method is simple, where the locations of the bit
plane Bi are replaced with the s2. After the bit plane replacement, a new bit plane Bi
with s2 embedded is obtained. Subsequently, delete s2 from S such that S = S − s2 .
In the following steps, we re-calculate two new quantization levels for the smooth
block I Bi to minimum the distortion in image quality.
7: According to the new bit plane Bi , the two new quantization levels ai and bi can be
re-calculated by using Eqs. 12 and 13, respectively.
8: If |ai − bi | ≤ thr, that means the two re-calculated quantization levels can maintain
the smoothness property of the block I Bi , then these two values ai and bi can be
used as two new quantization levels for the block I Bi . Then add {ai , bi , Bi } into Is .
If |ai −bi | > thr, two old quantization levels ai and bi which determine the smooth-
ness property of the block remain unchanged, and the compressed codes {ai , bi , Bi }
is added into Is . Finally, go back to the Step 3 to handle the next unprocessed block.
9: Repeat Steps 3-8 until all the image blocks are completely processed, the stego
AMBTC-compressed codes Is is constructed. The output compressed images Is
consists of (N × N )/(4 × 4) trios, each of which contains two quantization levels
and one bit plane.

The stego image constructed by the proposed scheme is in compressed format, which can
improve the efficiency for data transmission and storing. Any one can decode the AMBTC-
image from the stego compressed codes by using the original decoding procedure of the
AMBTC method. During the constructing process, two quantization levels are re-calculated
for the smooth block to minimize the distortion in image quality. Thus, the visual quality
of the stego image is further improved by the proposed scheme. In addition, several bits are
embedded into the complex block, which can increase the payload without introducing any
distortion. Further, with the adjustable threshold thr, the payload and the visual quality of
the stego image can be easily controlled for different applications.
Multimed Tools Appl

An example to explain the process of constructing the stego image is shown in Fig. 1,
where a sequence bits S = {1, 0000, 0001, 0101, 1000} is taken as the encrypted data
and the value of thr is set to 15. Original blocks I B1 and I B2 are first compressed by
the AMBTC method, and the compressed codes {82, 90, B1 } and {179, 197, B2 } can be
obtained for the blocks I B1 and I B2 , respectively. For the block I B1 , since |a1 − b1 | =
|82 − 90| = 8 < thr, the block I B1 is classified as a smooth block. Thus, 16 bits
{0000, 0001, 0101, 1000} from S can be embedded in the block I B1 . According to the
embedding strategy for the smooth block in Algorithm 1, we first replace the bit plane B1
with the 16 bits {0000, 0001, 0101, 1000} to gain a new bit plane B1 . Subsequently, accord-
ing to B1 , the two new quantization levels a1 = 86 and b1 = 85  can be re-calculated
by using Eqs. 12 and 13. Since the absolute difference a1 − b1  = |86 − 85| = 1 is
less than the threshold value thr, that means the smoothness property of the block I B1
can be maintained. Thus, the two calculated values a1 and b1 can be used to replace a1
and b1 as the two quantization levels for the block I B1 . Finally, the stego compressed
codes respect to I B1 can be stated as {a1 , b1 , B1 } = {86, 85, B1 }. For the block I B2 , since
|a2 − b2 | = |179 − 197| = 18 > thr, the block I B2 is classified as a complex block. Thus,
one bit ’1’ from S can be embedded in the block I B2 . According to the embedding strategy
for the complex block in Algorithm 1, because the bit to be embedded is equal to ’1’, the two
quantization levels a2 and b2 are exchanged together with toggling the bit plane B2 . Finally,
the stego compressed codes respect to I B2 is stated as {b2 , a2 , B2 } = {197, 179, B2 }

3.2 Data extraction

The data extracting procedure is relatively simple as compared to the procedure of

constructing the stego-image. Details of data extracting procedure are illustrated in
Algorithm 2.

Algorithm 2 (Extract the encrypted data from the stego AMBTC-compressed codes)
Input: A stego AMBTC-compressed codes Is which consists of (N × N )/(4 × 4) trios
{ai , bi , Bi }, where i = 1, 2, · · · , (N × N )/(4 × 4), and a parameter thr.

Output: A bit sequence S E .

1: S E = ∅.
2: For each trio {ai , bi , Bi } in Is , compute the absolute difference value of the ai and
bi , such that di = |ai − bi |.
3: If di > thr, one bit s1 can be extracted. If ai > bi , s1 can be extracted as ’1’;
otherwise, s1 extracted as ’0’. Then, add the extracted bit s1 into S E and go back to
Step 2 to handle the next unprocessed trio.
4: If di ≤ thr, 16 bits s2 can be extracted from the bit plane Bi . Then, add s2 into S E
and go back to Step 2 to handle the next unprocessed trio.
5: Repeat Steps 2-4 until all the trios are completely processed, and the bit sequence
S E containing the encrypted data are generated. .

After extracting all the encrypted data S E by Algorithm 2, the final process is to decrypt
the original secret data by using a key p. Obviously, the computation complexity of the
extracting process is quite low. Similarly, an example is taken for illustrating the process of
 Multimed Tools Appl

Fig. 1 An example to explain the process for constructing the stego image

data extraction. Recall to the previous example of Fig. 1, for the stego block 1, the absolute
difference value of two quantization levels a1 and b1 is smaller than the threshold value,
such that |a1 − b1 | = |86 − 85| = 1 < thr. Hence, 16 bits {0000, 0001, 0101, 1000} can
be extracted from the bit plane of the stego block 1. For the stego block 2, the absolute
difference value of two quantization levels a2 and b2 is larger than the threshold value, such
that |a2 − b2 | = |179 − 197| = 18 > thr. Hence, one bit can be extracted from the stego
block 2. Since a2 > b2 , the secret bit is extracted as ’1’.

3.3 Computational complexity

In this section, a brief discussion on computational complexity of the proposed scheme is

provided. As stated in [23], the AMBTC method preserves the first absolute moment along
with the mean instead of using the standard deviation in the BTC method. Hence, the com-
putational complexity of the AMBTC method is simpler and proportional to the image size
which indicates the number of pixels in the image. Let t be the image size, the compu-
tation complexity of the AMBTC method is O(t). During the encoding procedure of the
proposed scheme, in order to minimize the distortion in image quality, two quantization
levels of the smooth block would be computed twice. Thus, the computational time of the
proposed scheme would cost at most two times as that of the normal AMBTC method. As a
result, the computational complexity for the encoding procedure of the proposed scheme
is O(t) as well. When applying the normal decoding procedure of the AMBTC method
on the stego compressed codes by the proposed scheme, the stego image can be decoded.
Thus, the computational complexity of the decoding procedure in the proposed scheme
is the same as that in the AMBTC method, which is stated as O(t). As compared to
the encoding procedure of the proposed scheme, the data extraction is relatively simple.
The extracting operation for an image block is implemented according to computing the
difference of two quantization levels. As described in Algorithm 2, the extracting proce-
t
dure of the proposed scheme requires 4×4 extracting operations to be completed. Therefore,
the computational complexity of the data extraction is O(t) as well. Computational com-
plexities of the proposed scheme and the AMBTC method are demonstrated in Table 1,
where N/A indicates ”not available” which means a method dose not provide the compared
item.
Multimed Tools Appl

Table 1 Computational complexities of the proposed scheme and the AMBTC method.

Methods Computational complexity

Encoding Decoding Extracting

procedure procedure procedure

The AMBTC method O(t) O(t) N/A

The proposed scheme O(t) O(t) O(t)

3.4 Calculation for the payload

As described in Section 3.1, 16 bits can be embedded in a smooth block while only 1 bit be
embedded in a complex block. Thus, the image with larger amount of smooth blocks has
higher payload. As well, the value of thr influences the payload of the proposed scheme. As
increasing the thr, the number of smooth blocks is enlarged and more bits can be embedded
in them. For an N × N image I , the number of smooth blocks can be stated as T 1 =
getN um(I, thr), where the getN um() is a function to output the number of smooth blocks
by the inputs thr and I . Since the total number T of the blocks in image I is (N ×N )/(4×4),
thus the number T 2 of complex blocks can be obtained by computing T 2 = T − T 1 =
(N ×N )/(4×4)−T 1. In our scheme, the stego image is compressed by the AMBTC method
with the 4 × 4 block size, where the compression rate is 1/4. Thus, the size of stego image
can be computed as (N × N × 8)/4 bits. The embedding capacity () and the payload (η)
of the stego image by the proposed scheme can be obtained by computing:

 = T 1 × 16 + T 2 ∗ 1 = (T − T 2) × 16 + T 2 = 16 × T − 15 × T 2, (14)

η= . (15)
(N × N × 8)/4

From Eq. 14, it can be found that when the number T 2 of complex blocks is zero (T 2 =
0), the proposed scheme achieves the maximum embedding capacity, such that  = N × N .
As well, the corresponding payload can be computed as η = 50 % by using Eq. 15. On
the other hand, when the number of complex blocks is equal to the total number of the
blocks (T 2 = T = (N × N )/(4 × 4)), the proposed scheme is reduced to a reversible
scheme and achieves the minimum embedding capacity, such that  = (N × N )/(4 × 4).
Then, the corresponding minimum payload can be computed as 1/32. The calculated results
mentioned above are based on the 4 × 4 block size. Even, when the block size for the
AMBTC method is set to 8 × 8, the smaller size of stego image can be computed as (N ×
N ×5)/4. According to Eq. 15, the higher payload can be achieved with smaller stego image
size, where the maximum payload by the proposed scheme can be computed as η = 80 %.

4 Experimental results

In this section, several experiments have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the
proposed scheme. The test goals for this work is to demonstrate that the proposed scheme
achieves high payload and commendable image quality at the same time. In the experiments,
the messages to be embedded are generated by a pseudo-random number generator with
identical probabilities for bits ”1” and ”0”.
 Multimed Tools Appl

4.1 High payload and the imperceptibility

In the experiments, the objective quality measurement Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR)
is employed to evaluate the quality of the stego-image. Higher PSNR indicates better image
quality or more natural looking image. The computation of PSNR is defined as follows:

2552
PSNR = 10 log10 , (16)
MSE
1 
N 
N
MSE = (Xi,j − X̃i,j )2 , (17)
N ×N
i=1 j =1

where MSE indicates the mean square error between the cover image X and the stego
image X̃. The variables Xi,j and X̃i,j denote the pixel values in the cover image X and the
stego image X̃, respectively. The variable N denotes the dimension of the image. In addition
to the PSNR quality estimation, another metric, mean Structural Similarly Index Measure
(MSSIM), is also used to measure the similarity between the cover image and stego image
[32]. The value of MSSIM is in interval [0,1]. The value 0 means the two images are totally
unrelated and 1 means exactly the same. The Bit rate indicator which means the number
of bits required for encoding one pixel is defined as follows:
L
Bit rate = , (18)
N ×N
where L denotes the length of AMBTC-compressed codes, and N × N indicates the
image size. As stated in Section 3, the parameter thr represents the threshold which is
used to determine whether the block is smooth or not. Indeed, the parameter thr influ-
ences the payload and image quality. As increasing thr, the visual quality is reduced but the
payload is enlarged. The proposed scheme with different values of thr is implemented
by using a collection of 49 standard grey-scale images with 512 × 512 pixels [31]. The
experimental results are shown in Fig. 2, where the PSNRs, MSSIMs and payloads are the
average values of the 49 test images. In Fig. 2, the curves show the experimental results
with the parameter thr varied from 0 up to 100. It is observed that the PSNR and MSSIM
evaluating for the image quality are reduced along with increasing thr, but its payload is
enlarged.
From the experimental results of Fig. 2, the relation of payload (η) and the visual quality
(PSNR and MSSIM) can be obtained and shown in Fig. 3, where the curve describe the
visual quality (PSNR and MSSIM) varies with different payloads (ηs). Both PSNR and
MSSIM can be used to measure the visual quality of the stego image in the experiments,
so that the curves for PSNR and MSSIM are very similar, as shown in Fig. 3. The points
from left to right on the curves indicate the visual quality (PSNR and MSSIM) and payload
(η) with the thr varied from 0 up to 100, respectively. In this paper, the security for the
proposed scheme mainly involves two aspects, the imperceptibility and the un-detectability.
For the aim of the imperceptibility, the PSNR of the stego image is desired to be close as to
that of the corresponding normal image, and the MSSIM is desired to be as close to ’1’. The
imperceptibility is demonstrated in Fig. 3. It can be found that the visual qualities by the
proposed scheme are reduced slightly, as increasing payload from 0 up to around 40 %. For
example, when thr is increased from 0 up to 25, the average values of PSNRs and MSSIMs
are reduced only by around 1.52dB and 0.028 respectively, but the average value of payload
is increased by around 29.92 %. The reductions of PSNR and MSSIM can be considered
Multimed Tools Appl

Fig. 2 PSNRs, MSSIMs and payloads with different values of thr in the proposed scheme, where thr varied
from 0 up to 100. a The average PSNR of 49 test images with different values of thr, b the average MSSIM
of 49 test images with different values of thr, c the average payload of 49 test images with different values
of thr

very small, which indicates the visual qualities of the stego images are very close to those of
the corresponding normal images. On the other hand, the security about the un-detectability
will be analyzed in Section 4.3.
As discussed above, the tradeoff among the payload and the image quality can vary
from the application to application by setting different parameter thr. According to
the different practical applications, different values for the thr would be chosen. In
some specific applications such as medical uses, military uses and artistic uses, any
distortion of image quality may not be acceptable. In this case, the parameter thr would
be set to 0 for obtaining the stego AMBTC-compressed image by the proposed
scheme, where the visual quality of the stego AMBTC-compressed image has no distortion
as compared to the normal AMBTC-compressed image. Another applications desire higher
image quality but tolerate tiny distortion, the parameter thr would be bigger than zero and
relatively small in the interval [0, 255], e.g., thr = 10, with which larger PSNR indicat-
ing the higher image quality is achieved. However, many other applications require higher
embedding capacity with accepting low image quality, for which the parameter thr would
be set to a bigger value for obtaining the expected embedding capacity. For example, when
the payload by the proposed scheme is expected as large as possible without considering
the poor image quality, the parameter thr would be set to 255 for achieving a maximum
payload.
 Multimed Tools Appl

Fig. 3 PSNR and MSSIM curves with different payloads in the proposed scheme

Tables 2 and 3 show the experimental results on some standard images by the proposed
scheme with the parameters thr = 25 and thr = 30, where the test images are 512 ×
512 in size. It is observed that the PSNRs of the stego images and their normal AMBTC-
compressed images are close, and the MSSIMs are also high and very close to 1. Further,
the payloads (η) for test images are high with slightly reducing the visual quality. When
increasing thr from 25 to 30, the average payload is increased around by 2.1 %, but the
PSNR is reduced only 0.4dB. In addition, it is also observed that the payloads are varied
with different type images. The smooth image which contains more smooth blocks leads
to the higher payload. As shown in Fig. 4, image ’Peppers’ is the smooth type image with
larger amount of smooth blocks, so that more bits can be embedded and its payload is

Table 2 Experimental results on some standard images with parameter thr = 25

Images PSNR (dB) MSSIM Embedding payload (η)

AMBTC Stego capacity (bits) (%)

images images

Lena 33.23 31.35 0.9758 226,474 43,20

Baboon 26.98 26.34 0.9757 124,969 23.84
Plane 32.21 31.04 0.9820 217,549 41.49
Peppers 34.31 32.05 0.9789 232,819 44.41
Boats 31.55 30.14 0.9777 206,629 39.41
Barb 29.39 28.46 0.9788 175,294 33.43
Clown 31.86 30.16 0.9697 208,714 39.81
House 31.43 29.83 0.9751 200,929 38.32
Houses 26.67 26.20 0.9843 125,434 23.92
Lighthouse 29.00 27.75 0.9546 187,969 35.85
Kiel 28.09 27.46 0.9799 175,324 33.44
Pent 31.11 29.28 0.9671 194,779 37.15
Zelda 36.72 33.21 0.9753 246,484 47.01
Average 30.97 29.48 0.9750 194,110 37.02
Multimed Tools Appl

Table 3 Experimental results on some standard images with parameter thr = 30

Images PSNR (dB) MSSIM Embedding payload (η)

AMBTC Stego capacity (bits) (%)

images images

Lena 33.23 30.92 0.9722 234,004 44,63

Baboon 26.98 26.02 0.9679 141,919 27.07
Plane 32.21 30.75 0.9795 223,039 42.54
Peppers 34.31 31.64 0.9762 238,969 45.58
Boats 31.55 29.69 0.9713 217,264 41.44
Barb 29.39 28.09 0.9721 187,879 35.84
Clown 31.86 29.70 0.9645 219,169 41.80
House 31.43 29.28 0.9695 214,609 40.93
Houses 26.67 25.90 0.9774 141,724 27.03
Lighthouse 29.00 27.50 0.9462 198,139 37.79
Kiel 28.09 27.20 0.9749 186,139 35.50
Pent 31.11 28.75 0.9572 209,929 40.04
Zelda 36.72 32.71 0.9721 252,334 48.13
Average 30.97 29.09 0.9693 205,009 39.10

higher. However, since the image ’Baboon’ is a complex type image, the payload of which
is relatively low as compared to the image ’Peppers’. The payload for the smooth image
’Peppers’ achieves 44.41 % and the payload for the complex image ’Baboon’ only achieves
23.84 %.

4.2 Comparisons and discussions

When the thr is set to ’0’, the blocks with two same quantization levels are classified as
smooth blocks, while the blocks with different quantization levels are classified as com-
plex blocks. Since embedding bits into the smooth blocks with two same levels does not
introduce any distortion to the reconstructed image block, the proposed scheme is reduced
to a reversible scheme, where the stego image is exactly the same as its normal AMBTC-
compressed image. The comparison of the performances among the proposed reversible
scheme and related schemes is demonstrated in Table 4. The payload of the proposed
scheme is higher than that of Hong et al.’s scheme [19], because when the cover image has
smooth blocks with two same quantization levels, the proposed scheme can replace the bit
plane of the smooth block with some bits while Hong et al.’s scheme can not. Compared
with the proposed reversible schemes, the reversible schemes presented in [29, 34] achieve
higher embedding capacity with variable bit rate. However, their schemes need extra infor-
mation to achieve reversibility, such as the key to generate M-sequence, the length of secret
data and the cover image size. Moreover, when the normal decoding procedure of the
AMBTC method is applied on their stego compression codes, the AMBTC-compressed
image cannot be successfully decoded. It may increase suspicion from the invaders and
make them start detecting the secret. Different from the schemes in [29, 34], the proposed
scheme can achieve a irreversible scheme with higher thr, where larger payload would be
obtained.
 Multimed Tools Appl

Fig. 4 Experimental results on the smooth image ’Pepper’ and the complex image ’Baboon’ by the proposed
scheme with the parameter thr = 25. a A normal AMBTC image ’Peppers’ and its PSNR is 34.31dB, b a
normal AMBTC image ’Baboon’ and its PSNR is 26.98dB, c the stego image ’Peppers’ and its parameters:
P SN R = 32.05dB, MSSI M = 0.9789 and η = 44.41 %, d the stego image ’Baboon’ and its parameters:
P SN R = 26.34dB, MSSI M = 0.9757 and η = 23.84 %

Although the proposed scheme with the parameter thr = 0 can achieve the reversibility,
it can be observed that the payload is relatively low which may lead to the limitation of its
application. On the other hand, when the thr is large enough to let some block with differ-
ent quantization levels be classified as smooth block, the proposed scheme is irreversible.
Figure 5 shows the PSNRs and MSSIMs by the proposed scheme and Chuang et al.’s scheme
[12] with different payloads, where the PSNRs, MSSIMs and payloads are the average val-
ues of the 49 test images. It can be observed that the PSNRs and MSSIMs of the proposed
scheme are better than those of the Chuang et al.’s scheme under the same payload. As well,
the payload of the proposed scheme is higher than that of the Chuang et al.’s scheme under
the same visual quality. It can be concluded that both visual quality and payload of the pro-
posed scheme outperform those of Chuang et al.’s. For further comparison, Table 5 shows
the PSNRs, MSSIMs and embedding capacities of some standard images for the proposed
scheme and Chuang et al.’s scheme, where the values of thr are varied from 10 up to 50 with
a step of 10. From the Table 5, it can be observed that the PSNRs, MSSIMs and embedding
Multimed Tools Appl

Table 4 Comparison of the performances on some standard images among the proposed scheme with thr =
0 and related schemes

Algorithms Performances Lena Baboon Plane Peppers Boats Barb Clown House Kiel

AMBTC PSNR (dB) 33.23 26.98 32.21 34.31 31.55 29.39 31.86 31.43 28.09
Bit rate (bpp) 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000
Ours PSNR(dB) 33.23 26.98 32.21 34.31 31.55 29.39 31.86 31.43 28.09
MSSIM 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Capacity (bits) 16,399 16,384 16,414 16,384 16,384 16,384 35,194 18,919 16,414
Bit rate (bpp) 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000
Chen PSNR(dB) 33.23 26.98 32.21 34.31 31.55 29.39 31.86 31.43 28.09
et al.’s [19] MSSIM 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Capacity (bits) 16,399 16,384 16,414 16,384 16,384 16,384 35,194 18,919 16,414
Bit rate (bpp) 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000
Hong PSNR(dB) 33.23 26.98 32.21 34.31 31.55 29.39 31.86 31.43 28.09
et al.’s [10] MSSIM 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Capacity (bits) 16,383 16,384 16,382 16,384 16,384 16,384 15,130 16,215 16,382
Bit rate (bpp) 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000
Sun et PSNR(dB) 33.23 26.98 32.21 34.31 31.55 29.39 31.86 31.43 28.09
al.’s [29] MSSIM 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Capacity (bits) 64,008 64,008 64,008 64,008 64,008 64,008 64,008 64,008 64,008
Bit rate (bpp) 1.978 2.147 1.984 2.000 1.979 2.017 1.990 2.058 1.994
Zhang PSNR(dB) 33.23 26.98 32.21 34.31 31.55 29.39 31.86 31.43 28.09
et al.’s [34] MSSIM 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Capacity (bits) 32,768 32,768 32,768 32,768 32,768 32,768 32,768 32,768 32,768
Bit rate (bpp) 1.890 1.992 1.873 1.899 1.885 1.931 1.888 1.929 1.892

capacities of the proposed scheme outperform those of Chuang et al.’s scheme for all values
of thr, especially for constructing the stegos with higher thr. For example, when the value

Fig. 5 PSNR and MSSIM curves with different payloads for the proposed scheme and Chuang et al.’s
scheme
 Multimed Tools Appl

Table 5 Comparison of the performances on some standard images among the proposed scheme and Chuang
et al.’scheme [12]

thr Algorithms Performances Lena Baboon Plane Peppers Boats Barb Clown

N/A AMBTC PSNR (dB) 33.23 26.98 32.21 34.31 31.55 29.39 31.86
Bit rate (bpp) 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000
10 Ours PSNR (dB) 32.67 26.92 31.91 33.36 31.32 29.22 31.52
MSSIM 0.9899 0.9967 0.9905 0.9888 0.9947 0.9942 0.9923
Capacity (bits) 172,579 50,374 178,099 183,529 148,609 121,759 136,774
Bit rate (bpp) 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000
Chuang et al.’s PSNR (dB) 32.03 26.85 31.54 32.37 31.04 29.01 31.03
MSSIM 0.9812 0.9937 0.9834 0.9772 0.9898 0.9895 0.9800
Capacity (bits) 166,608 36,256 172,496 178,288 141,040 112,400 128,416
Bit rate (bpp) 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000
20 Ours PSNR (dB) 31.78 26.58 31.34 32.42 30.62 28.23 30.61
MSSIM 0.9794 0.9832 0.9844 0.9813 0.9846 0.9865 0.9751
Capacity (bits) 216,529 106,534 209,794 224,989 191,914 158,794 194,944
Bit rate (bpp) 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000
Chuang et al.’s PSNR (dB) 30.43 26.11 30.39 30.78 29.63 28.19 29.30
MSSIM 0.9631 0.9688 0.9730 0.9638 0.9719 0.9716 0.9471
Capacity (bits) 213,488 96,160 206,304 222,512 187,232 151,904 190,464
Bit rate (bpp) 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000
30 Ours PSNR (dB) 30.91 26.02 30.75 31.64 29.69 28.09 29.70
MSSIM 0.9722 0.9679 0.9795 0.9762 0.9713 0.9721 0.9645
Capacity (bits) 234,004 141,919 223,039 238,969 217,264 187,879 219,169
Bit rate (bpp) 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000
Chuang et al.’s PSNR (dB) 29.06 25.04 29.34 29.58 28.05 26.83 27.85
MSSIM 0.9510 0.9415 0.9647 0.9554 0.9504 0.9511 0.9292
Capacity (bits) 232,128 133,904 220,432 237,424 214,272 182,928 216,304
Bit rate (bpp) 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000
40 Ours PSNR (dB) 30.02 25.17 29.97 30.88 28.83 27.22 28.68
MSSIM 0.9647 0.9475 0.9740 0.9715 0.9601 0.9584 0.9471
Capacity (bits) 245,569 173,974 233,329 247,219 231,544 207,904 236,539
Bit rate (bpp) 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000
Chuang et al.’s PSNR (dB) 27.78 23.58 28.06 28.50 26.76 25.47 26.41
MSSIM 0.9390 0.9057 0.9551 0.9461 0.9320 0.9289 0.9027
Capacity (bits) 244,464 168,096 231,408 246,224 229,504 204,288 234,832
Bit rate (bpp) 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000
50 Ours PSNR (dB) 29.30 24.11 29.20 30.29 28.00 26.31 27.96
MSSIM 0.9580 0.9238 0.9687 0.9673 0.9488 0.9436 0.9351
Capacity (bits) 252,154 204,319 240,709 251,854 241,834 223,534 245,854
Bit rate (bpp) 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000
Chuang et al.’s PSNR (dB) 26.80 22.00 26.93 27.66 25.58 24.17 25.42
MSSIM 0.9280 0.8633 0.9457 0.9400 0.9149 0.9049 0.88
Capacity (bits) 251,488 200,464 239,280 251,168 240,480 220,960 244,768
Bit rate (bpp) 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000 2.000
Multimed Tools Appl

of thr is set to 10 for image ’Lena’, our PSNR is 32.67dB, that is 0.64dB improvement on
Chuang et al.’s scheme. When the value of thr is increased up to 20, our PSNR will outper-
form Chuang et al.’s PSNR by 1.43dB. In summary, the proposed scheme achieves higher
payload and better visual quality than the Chuang et al.’s scheme.
It is also desired to provide comparisons between the proposed scheme and the
related difference-expansion (DE) based schemes [20, 22], as illustrated as in
Table 6. Different from the related DE-based schemes, the proposed scheme can
achieve both reversibility and irreversibility, which is favorable for extending its
application. When an appropriate parameter thr is adopted, we achieve an irreversible
version of the proposed scheme where higher payload can be gained. As shown in
Table 6, the PSNR for the stego image by the proposed scheme is relatively low as compared
to that of the uncompressed image, because that the stego image is in AMBTC-compressed
format which can reduce the capacity of transfer and storage. Although the PSNR of
the AMBTC-compressed stego image is lower than that of the uncompressed stego
image, it is still very closed to the PSNR of the normal AMBTC-compressed image while
obtaining high payload, which is demonstrated in Table 5. On the other hand, the stego
image by the related DE-based schemes [20, 22] is in uncompressed image format with 8
bits per pixel, which may cause suspicion from the invaders because that the images trans-
mitted over the Internet are generally in compressed format. In addition, these reversible
schemes need extra storage to achieve the reversibility, such as a location map or the stor-
age for dealing with overflow and underflow, which would also cause suspicion from the
invaders.

4.3 Steganalysis

The proposed scheme mainly embeds amount of bits into the least significant blocks
where two quantization levels are very similar. However, there still has no research fin-
gering out whether or not the BTC-based steganography method is capable of resisting
the structure steganalysis, which is then demonstrated in this section. RS steganalysis
[14] is a famous method to detect the stegos, where a discrimination function f and flip-
ping mask M are defined. RM is the relative percentage of the regular group in which
the magnitude of f increases when f1 is applied to a part of each block, whereas SM is
the relative percentage of the singular group with decreasing magnitude of f . Similarly,
two other parameters R−M and S−M can be defined when f−1 is applied to a part of each

Table 6 Comparisons between the proposed scheme and related difference-expansion based schemes

Features Schemes

[22] [20] The proposed scheme

Reversibility Yes Yes Yes

Irreversibility No No Yes
Payload Low High Higer
PSNR for Stego image High High Relatively low
Format of Stego image Uncompressed Uncompressed Compressed
Extra storage Yes Yes No
 Multimed Tools Appl

block. For natural images without any bit embedded, the percentage of regular groups and
singular groups generally follow the relation that:
(RM ≈ R−M ) > (SM ≈ S−M ). (19)
In this test, RS staganalysis is employed to evaluate the security of the proposed scheme
and the simple LSB scheme [4]. This is implemented in Fig. 6, where the RS analysis results
for two stego images generated by the simple LSB scheme and the proposed scheme. The
masks M and −M are respectively set to
 
0 1
(20)
1 0
and  
0 −1
. (21)
−1 0
For the simple LSB scheme, as increasing the payload, the difference between RM (SM )
and R−M (S−M ) will become larger, as shown in Fig. 6a. However, the LSB style artifacts
can be easily avoided in our scheme. As shown in Fig. 6b, as increasing the payloads up
to the highest payload, the difference between RM (SM ) and R−M (S−M ) remains close.
Hence, the RS steganalysis is observed to be ineffective at detecting the stegos by our
scheme.
Similarly, no research on SVM-based steganalysis has been done for the BTC-based
steganography scheme. To test the security of the proposed scheme, 200 images are
randomly selected from the BOSSBase (V1.01) image database which 10000 contains
512 × 512 grey-level images. The 200 AMBTC-compressed images associated to the 200
selected images are generated by the normal AMBTC method, and the 200 corresponding
stego images are also generated by the proposed scheme with various threshold values from
0 to 3 with a step of 1. The test images consists of 200 AMBTC-compressed images and
200 stego images. The features are extracted from the test images by the Shi-78D scheme

Fig. 6 RS analysis for the stego AMBTC ’Peppers’ with size of 512 × 512. The x-axis denotes payload
and the y-axis denotes the relative percentages of regular and singular groups with marks M and −M, where
M = [0, 1; 1, 0] . (a) RS analysis for the stego image ’Peppers’ by the simple LSB scheme [4], (b) RS
analysis for the stego image ’Peppers’ by the proposed scheme
Multimed Tools Appl

[27]. For the Shi-78D scheme, the statistical moments of characteristic functions for the pre-
diction error, the test image and the wavelet subbands are used to reflect the differentiation
property of the associated histogram between the stego images and the corresponding nor-
mal images. SVM classifier is used for classification, where 100 of test images are selected
for training and another 100 of test images are for testing. The averaging payloads by the
proposed scheme with thr being 0,1,2,3 are 3.80 %, 11.39 %, 14.08 %, 17.99 %, respec-
tively. The corresponding detection rates are also obtained as 35.00 %, 89.40 %, 93.20 %
and 96.00 %, respectively. It can be seen that the results are good at the lower payload, e.g.,
at 3.80 %. For the 3.80 % payload, the detection rate obtained was only 35.00 %, which
is smaller than the probability of a random guessing. Unfortunately, at higher payload like
11.39 % with thr = 1, the detection rate is 89.40 %. This may be due to the fact that the
amount of complex blocks in the cover image is not sufficient to hide the data and hence
the proposed scheme conceal some data into the smooth blocks
As discussed above, it is concluded that the proposed scheme is able to resist the RS ste-
ganalysis even at a maximum payload. However, for the SVM-based steganalysis scheme
with Shi-78D feature, the proposed scheme resist the detectability attack only at a lower
payload. Further, even if the illegal attacker detects our stego image and extracts the mes-
sage embedded in the image, she/he still cannot obtain the original secret data, because the
secret data have been encrypted with a key by the encryption method before performing the
embedding process. The secret data cannot be decrypted without a key.

5 Conclusion

In this paper, an improved image steganography scheme based on AMBTC is presented.

The proposed scheme directly embeds data into the AMBTC-compressed codes instead of
the original format image, which can improve the efficiency of data transmission and reduce
suspicion from invaders on image communication. All the blocks in AMBTC compressed
codes, both smooth blocks and complex blocks, are used to embed data, so that the pay-
load of the proposed scheme is enhanced. When embedding data in smooth blocks, two
new quantization levels are re-calculated to minimize distortion in image quality. When
embedding data in complex blocks, no distortion is introduced. Hence, the visual quality of
the stego image by the proposed scheme can also be improved. In addition, the proposed
scheme inherits the advantages of AMBTC, such as low computation complexity and ease
to be implemented. In summary, the proposed scheme can achieve high payload, good visual
quality and low computational complexity at the same time. With the adjustable threshold,
the application of the proposed scheme becomes flexible, that means different values of
the threshold can be used for different applications, e.g., when the value of the threshold
is set to ’0’, the proposed scheme achieves reversibility for the application where the cover
images are valuable and should be restored without distortion. Further, any one can effi-
ciently decode the AMBTC image from the stego compressed codes by using the original
decoding procedure of AMBTC, that is beneficial to reduce suspicion from the invaders.
However, only the legal receiver with a key can decrypt the original secret data from
the stego AMBTC-compressed codes. Experimental results and analysis are demonstrated,
illustrating that the proposed scheme is effective and provides better visual quality for the
stego image and the higher payload as compared to some previously reported schemes.

Acknowledgments This work was in part supported by 973 Program (Grant No. 2011CB302400) and
Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province, China (Grant No. S2013010013728).
 Multimed Tools Appl

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Duanhao Ou received his BSc in computer science from South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou,
P.R., China, in 2009. He is currently a PhD candidate in the School of Information and Science at Sun Yat-Sen
University. His research interests are steganography, secret sharing and image processing.

Wei Sun received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Sun Yat-sen University in 2004. He is currently a
professor in the School of Software at Sun Yat-sen University. His research interests are multimedia security
and computer graphics.