BOTH COLOR AND GRAY SCALE SECRET IMAGES HIDING IN A COLOR IMAGE

Author(s):  
MIN-HUI LIN ◽  
YU-CHEN HU ◽  
CHIN-CHEN CHANG

In the past, most image hiding techniques have been applied only to gray scale images. Now, many valuable images are color images. Thus, it has become important to be able to apply image-hiding techniques to hide color images. In this paper, our proposed scheme can not only be applied to "a color host image hiding a color secret image", but also to "a color host image hiding a gray scale secret image". Our scheme utilizes the rightmost 3, 2 and 3 bits of the R, G, B channels of every pixel in the host image to hide related information from the secret image. Meanwhile, we utilize the leftmost 5, 6, 5 bits of the R, G, B channels of every pixel in the host image and set the remaining bits as zero to generate a palette. We then use the palette to conduct color quantization on the secret image to convert its 24-bit pixels into pixels with 8-bit palette index values. DES encryption is then conducted on the index values before the secret image is embedded into the rightmost 3, 2, 3 bits of the R, G, B channels of every pixel in the host image. The experimental results show that even under the worst case scenario our scheme guarantees an average host image PSNR value of 39.184 and an average PSNR value of 27.3415 for the retrieved secret image. In addition to the guarantee of the quality of host images and retrieved secret images, our scheme further strengthens the protection of the secret image by conducting color quantization and DES encryption on the secret image in advance. Therefore, our scheme not only expands the application area of image hiding, but is also practical and secure.

Symmetry ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Lu Wang ◽  
Bin Yan ◽  
Hong-Mei Yang ◽  
Jeng-Shyang Pan

Visual cryptography (VC) has found numerous applications in privacy protection, online transaction security, and voting security, etc. To counteract potential cheating attacks, Lin et al. proposed flip visual cryptography in 2010, where a second secret image can be revealed by stacking one share with a flipped version of another share. The second secret image can be designed as an additional verification mechanism. However, Lin’s scheme produces meaningless shares and is only applicable to binary secret images. It is interesting to explore whether it is possible to extend the flip VC to having cover images (i.e., extended VC) and these cover images are color images. This problem is challenging since too many restricting conditions need to be met. In this paper, we designed a flip VC for gray-scale and color cover images based on constraint error diffusion. We show that it is possible to meet all the constraints simultaneously. Compared with existing schemes, our scheme enjoys the following features: Color cover images, no computation needed for decoding, and no interference from cover image on the recovered secret image.


Author(s):  
ASHWATHIMESANGLA AO

Visual cryptography is a secret sharing scheme for encrypting a secret image, it is a perfectly secure way that allows secret sharing without any cryptographic computation, which is termed as Visual Cryptography Scheme (VCS). In this paper secret image is divided into shares (printed on transparencies), and each share holds some information. At the receiver this shares are merged to obtain the secret information which is revealed without any complex computation. The proposed algorithm is for color host image, divided into three color planes Red, Green, Blue and merged with secret image which is binarized and divided into shares. The decoding requires aligning the result obtained by merging color host image and shares, so as to obtain the secret image.


2013 ◽  
Vol 321-324 ◽  
pp. 1133-1137
Author(s):  
Yu Ting Song ◽  
Xiu Hua Ji ◽  
Shi Lin Zhao

This paper proposes an improved color image enhancement algorithm based on 3-D color histogram equalization algorithm. When the existed 3-D color histogram equalization algorithms in the literatures are applied in processing dim color images, the processed color images often turn pale due to the decrease of color-saturations and have false contours due to gray-scale merging phenomenon in the histogram equalization algorithm. In this paper, the proposed algorithm can make more pixels of the processed color images keep their color-saturations and reduce the gray-scale merging with Logarithmic histogram equalization algorithm. Test results with dim color images present a better effect of image enhancement.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (02) ◽  
pp. 1650006 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Manimehalai ◽  
P. Arockia Jansi Rani

Reversible watermarking methods are used for copyright protection and are able to recover the host image without distortion. Robust reversible watermarking technique should resist against intentional and unintentional image processing attacks. Robust reversible watermarking techniques should have three features namely imperceptibility, reversibility and robustness. In this paper, it is proposed to develop a new robust reversible blind watermarking for color images based on histogram construction of the wavelet coefficients constructed from the cover image. In the proposed approach, the red component of a host color image is decomposed into wavelet coefficients. Motivated by the excellent spatio-frequency localization properties of wavelets, this technique is proposed in the wavelet domain. The pixels are adjusted before watermark embedding such that both overflow and underflow of pixels during embedding is avoided and image is recovered without distortion. Based on histogram construction and the local sensitivity of Human Visual System (HVS) in wavelet domain, the watermark is embedded. For watermark extraction without host image, k-means clustering algorithm is proposed. The experimental results show that the proposed technique has good performance in terms of reversibility and robustness with the high quality of the watermarked image. The PSNR value of the recovered image is around 48[Formula: see text]dB which proves that the quality of the recovered image is not degraded.


Author(s):  
CHIN-CHEN CHANG ◽  
MIN-HUI LIN ◽  
YU-CHEN HU

The improving technology and the ubiquity of the Internet have allowed more and more people to transmit data via the Internet. The contents of the transmission can be in the form of words, voices, images, or even computer animation. To protect the contents from interceptors' attention, the image hiding technology thus emerged. Some contents transmitted via the Internet can be confidential data such as highly valued product design blueprints or war plans, so it is important to pay more attention to the security of the transmitted data, or what we called secret image in this paper. The point of this paper is to enhance the security of the secret image without causing too much distortion to the host image and in the meantime to shorten the image hiding process time. For better protection, we adopted encryption process DES. In addition, we used greedy algorithm to shorten hiding process and to protect the host image from being severely distorted. To test our proposed method to see whether it indeed achieved its objective, we used two sets of images in our experiment. The results of the experiments showed, when k = 2, our PSNR is close to that of Wang et al.'s optimal LSB substitution, but is not significantly different from that of simple LSB substitution. However, our method took approximately only 1/7 of the time consumed by Wang et al. When k = 3, our PSNR is significantly higher than that of simple LSB substitution. The experimental results confirmed that our method could effectively protect host image quality and shorten the overall hiding time when it enhanced the security of the secret image.


Fractals ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (04) ◽  
pp. 365-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. SANKARAGOMATHI ◽  
L. GANESAN ◽  
S. ARUMUGAM

With the rapid increase in the use of computers and the Internet, the demand for higher transmission and better storage is increasing as well. This paper describes the different techniques for data (image-video) compression in general and, in particular, the new compression technique called fractal image compression. Fractal image compression is based on self-similarity, where one part of an image is similar to the other part of the same image. Low bit rate color image sequence coding is very important for video transmission and storage applications. The most significant aspect of this work is the development of color images using fractal-based color image compression, since little work has been done previously in this area. The results obtained show that the fractal-based compression works for the color images works as well as for the gray-scale images. Nevertheless, the encoding of the color images takes more time than the gray-scale images. Color images are usually compressed in a luminance-chrominance coordinate space, with the compression performed independently for each coordinate by applying the monochrome image processing techniques. For image sequence compression, the design of an accurate and efficient algorithm for computing motion to exploit the temporal redundancy has been one of the most active research areas in computer vision and image compression. Pixel-based motion estimation algorithms address pixel correspondence directly by identifying a set of local features and computing a match between these features across the frames. These direct techniques share the common pitfall of high computation complexity resulting from the dense vector fields produced. For block matching motion estimation algorithms, the quad-tree data structure is frequently used in image coding to recursively decompose an image plane into four non-overlapping rectangular blocks.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 11-20
Author(s):  
Hikmat N. Abdullah ◽  
Sura F. Yousif ◽  
Alejandro A. Valenzuela

In this paper, a combination of spatial domain as well as transformation domain with the aid of chaotic sequences is used to propose an efficient steganography scheme for color images. The transform domain uses Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) for embedding the cover and secret images. Chaotic sequences are used for two purposes: first, to scramble the secret color image before hiding. Second, to randomly select the locations of the cover image for embedding. The two images are then merged together into a single image and the stego image is formed by applying IDWT. The secret image is extracted from the stego image without the need to the original cover image. The simulation results are evaluated in terms of Mean Square Error (MSE), correlation, and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) demonstrate that the proposed scheme has better robustness than the previous schemes in the literature in the presence of common image attacks including filtering and noise attacks. The obtained results for maximum PSNR and correlation were 76.8 dB and 99.99% for the stego image while for the extracted secret image were 55.4 dB and 100%.


2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Savelli ◽  
Susan Joslyn ◽  
Limor Nadav-Greenberg ◽  
Queena Chen

Author(s):  
D. V. Vaniukova ◽  
◽  
P. A. Kutsenkov ◽  

The research expedition of the Institute of Oriental studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences has been working in Mali since 2015. Since 2017, it has been attended by employees of the State Museum of the East. The task of the expedition is to study the transformation of traditional Dogon culture in the context of globalization, as well as to collect ethnographic information (life, customs, features of the traditional social and political structure); to collect oral historical legends; to study the history, existence, and transformation of artistic tradition in the villages of the Dogon Country in modern conditions; collecting items of Ethnography and art to add to the collection of the African collection of the. Peter the Great Museum (Kunstkamera, Saint Petersburg) and the State Museum of Oriental Arts (Moscow). The plan of the expedition in January 2020 included additional items, namely, the study of the functioning of the antique market in Mali (the “path” of things from villages to cities, which is important for attributing works of traditional art). The geography of our research was significantly expanded to the regions of Sikasso and Koulikoro in Mali, as well as to the city of Bobo-Dioulasso and its surroundings in Burkina Faso, which is related to the study of migrations to the Bandiagara Highlands. In addition, the plan of the expedition included organization of a photo exhibition in the Museum of the village of Endé and some educational projects. Unfortunately, after the mass murder in March 2019 in the village of Ogossogou-Pel, where more than one hundred and seventy people were killed, events in the Dogon Country began to develop in the worst-case scenario: The incessant provocations after that revived the old feud between the Pel (Fulbe) pastoralists and the Dogon farmers. So far, this hostility and mutual distrust has not yet developed into a full-scale ethnic conflict, but, unfortunately, such a development now seems quite likely.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed Abdelmoaty ◽  
Wessam Mesbah ◽  
Mohammad A. M. Abdel-Aal ◽  
Ali T. Alawami

In the recent electricity market framework, the profit of the generation companies depends on the decision of the operator on the schedule of its units, the energy price, and the optimal bidding strategies. Due to the expanded integration of uncertain renewable generators which is highly intermittent such as wind plants, the coordination with other facilities to mitigate the risks of imbalances is mandatory. Accordingly, coordination of wind generators with the evolutionary Electric Vehicles (EVs) is expected to boost the performance of the grid. In this paper, we propose a robust optimization approach for the coordination between the wind-thermal generators and the EVs in a virtual<br>power plant (VPP) environment. The objective of maximizing the profit of the VPP Operator (VPPO) is studied. The optimal bidding strategy of the VPPO in the day-ahead market under uncertainties of wind power, energy<br>prices, imbalance prices, and demand is obtained for the worst case scenario. A case study is conducted to assess the e?effectiveness of the proposed model in terms of the VPPO's profit. A comparison between the proposed model and the scenario-based optimization was introduced. Our results confirmed that, although the conservative behavior of the worst-case robust optimization model, it helps the decision maker from the fluctuations of the uncertain parameters involved in the production and bidding processes. In addition, robust optimization is a more tractable problem and does not suffer from<br>the high computation burden associated with scenario-based stochastic programming. This makes it more practical for real-life scenarios.<br>


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document