A variable depth LSB data hiding technique in images
In this paper, a data hiding technique by variable depth LSB substitution is proposed. Firstly, pixels of cover-image are grouped according to themselves luminance values. Then the occurrence of pixel-values in each group is counted and sorted in monotone increasing. Finally, a bitplane-wise data hiding method is used to hide data in cover image. The worst-square-error between the stego-image and the cover-image is formulated. Theory analysis indicates that image quality of the stego-image hidden by this method can improve from 0 db to 4 db against simple LSB (least significant bit) substitution method. Experimental results show that the stego-image is visually indistinguishable from the original cover-image.