Abstract: The least-significant-bit (LSB)-based approach is a popular type of steganographic algorithms in the spatial domain. However, in most existing approaches, the choice of embedding positions within a cover image mainly depends on a pseudorandom number generator without considering the relationship between the image content itself and the size of the secret message. Thus the smooth/flat regions in the cover images will inevitably be contaminated after data hiding even at a low embedding rate, and this will lead to poor visual quality and low security based on our analysis and extensive experiments, especially for those images with many smooth regions. The LSB matching revisited image steganography with an edge adaptive scheme can select the embedding regions according to the size of secret message and the difference between two consecutive pixels in the cover image. For lower embedding rates, only sharper edge regions are used while keeping the other smoother regions as they are. When the embedding rate increases, more edge regions can be released adaptively for data hiding by adjusting just a few parameters. The new scheme can enhance the security significantly compared with typical LSB-based approaches as well as their edge adaptive ones, such as pixel-value-differencing-based approaches, while preserving higher visual quailty of stego images at the same time.

Keywords: steganography, LSBM, LSBMR, edge adaptive LSBMR.