A new data hiding scheme for binary image authentication with small image distortion

A new data hiding scheme for binary image authentication that has a small distortion of the cover image is proposed in this paper. Using the data-embedding algorithm that is based on Hamming codes, the proposed scheme embeds authentication information into the cover image with flipping only a small number of pixels. A special type of the pixels are selected and flipped by a new algorithm to minimize visual distortion. This new algorithm is based on ELSSM (Edge Line Segment Similarity Measure). Randomly shuffling the bit-order of the authentication information to be embedded, the information can only be extracted by the designated receiver who has the symmetric key. We employ two measurement metrics: miss detection rates for the degree of security and PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio) and ELSSM for the degree of the image distortion to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed scheme. Using these metrics, we analyze the proposed scheme and the previous schemes. The analysis reveals that the proposed scheme requires less image distortion than the previous schemes whilst achieving the same level of the miss detection rate. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme is more resilient against recent steganalysis attacks than the previous schemes. (c) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.