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Journal of Engineering Science and Technology Review

Steganography of Quantum Color Images Based on Blocking and Gray Level Difference

Gaofeng Luo, Ling Shi, Ammar Oad, Liang Zong

Published Feb 1, 2020• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Steganography of quantum images is restricted by high fidelity and robustness, which limit hiding capacity and decrease visual quality.To improve the concealment of steganographic embedding of secret messages and enhance embedding capacity, the present study proposed a quantum red-green-blue (RGB) image steganography based on image block and gray level difference.First, digital color images were represented by quantum models and divided into non-overlapping blocks.Second, reference pixels in the blocks were selected, and gray level difference between the reference pixels and the G channel of other pixels was calculated.Third, according to the location of the difference, different bit planes where secret messages were embedded into the R and the B channels of the carrier image were determined.Finally, steganographic image was divided into blocks.The G channel gray difference was calculated, and the original secret message was extracted.Results demonstrate that quantum RGB image steganography has a steganographic capacity of four bits per pixel, and its quantum circuit is less complex.In comparison with other quantum image steganographic methods, the proposed method ensures a large steganographic capacity while realizing satisfactory visual quality and steganographic concealment.The study provides reference significance for exploring data hiding and quantum image security based on quantum RGB image block.

DOI
10.25103/jestr.131.13

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Steganography of quantum images is restricted by high fidelity and robustness, which limit hiding capacity and decrease visual quality.To improve the concealment of steganographic embedding of secret messages and enhance embedding capacity, the present study proposed a quantum red-green-blue (RGB) image steganography based on image block and gray level difference.First, digital color images were represented by quantum models and divided into non-overlapping blocks.Second, reference pixels in the blocks were selected, and gray level difference between the reference pixels and the G channel of other pixels was calculated.Third, according to the location of the difference, different bit planes where secret messages were embedded into the R and the B channels of the carrier image were determined.Finally, steganographic image was divided into blocks.The G channel gray difference was calculated, and the original secret message was extracted.Results demonstrate that quantum RGB image steganography has a steganographic capacity of four bits per pixel, and its quantum circuit is less complex.In comparison with other quantum image steganographic methods, the proposed method ensures a large steganographic capacity while realizing satisfactory visual quality and steganographic concealment.The study provides reference significance for exploring data hiding and quantum image security based on quantum RGB image block.
Digital steganography is the art and science of hiding information in covert channels, so as to conceal the information and prevent the detection of hidden messages. On the classic computer, the principle and method of digital steganography has been widely and deeply studied, and has been initially extended to the field of quantum computing. Quantum image steganography is a relatively active branch of quantum image processing, and the main strategy currently used is to modify the LSB of the cover image pixels. For the existing LSB-based quantum image steganography schemes, the embedding capacity is no more than 3 bits per pixel. Therefore, it is meaningful to study how to improve the embedding capacity of quantum image steganography. This work presents a novel steganography using reflected Gray code for color quantum images, and the embedding capacity of this scheme is up to 6 bits per pixel. In proposed scheme, the secret qubit sequence is considered as a sequence of 6-bit segments. For 6 bits in each segment, the first 3 bits are embedded into the second LSB of RGB channels of the cover image, and the remaining 3 bits are embedded into the LSB of RGB channels of the cover image using reflected-Gray code to determine the embedded bit from secret information. Following the transforming rule, the LSBs of stego-image are not always same as the secret bits and the differences are up to almost 50%. Experimental results confirm that the proposed scheme shows good performance and outperforms the previous ones currently found in the literature in terms of embedding capacity.
In quantum image steganography, embedding capacity and security are two important issues. This paper presents a novel quantum steganography scheme using color images as cover images. First, the secret information is divided into 3-bit segments, and then each 3-bit segment is embedded into the LSB of one color pixel in the cover image according to its own value and using Gray code mapping rules. Extraction is the inverse of embedding. We designed the quantum circuits that implement the embedding and extracting process. The simulation results on a classical computer show that the proposed scheme outperforms several other existing schemes in terms of embedding capacity and security.
Quantum steganography is a technology which can hide information effectively for achieving copyright protection. In this paper, a quantum steganography scheme using quantum wavelet transform and the novel enhanced quantum representation for quantum image is proposed, and this scheme can embed the secret text of size [Formula: see text] into a [Formula: see text] gray-scale carrier image. In the scrambling operation, the text is scrambled by the scrambling circuit including bit-reverse, quantum equal and CNOT gate to improve its security. Before embedding, the carrier image is first transformed by 1-level quantum Haar wavelet transform, and then its low-frequency part is divided into blocks. The simulation results suggest that the proposed scheme has good performance in visual quality and robustness. Finally, through the analysis of circuit complexity, the scheme has low complexity O(n).
At present, quantum image data hiding technology is restricted by high fidelity and embedding capacity, which frequently leads to permanent distortion of carrier images.A reversible data hiding method based on quantum controlled-NOT (CNOT) gate operation was proposed in the present study to satisfy the requirements of embedding capacity and visual quality and recover the original carrier image without loss.First, the hidden and carrier images were represented by a novel enhanced quantum representation of digital images.The hidden images were then encrypted and scrambled by employing chaos method.The quantum secret image was embedded into the relevant bit plane of the quantum carrier image considering quantum CNOT gate operation.The quantum key image was also generated.Finally, the current work not only extracted the quantum secret image without error but also recovered the carrier image without loss via inverse quantum CNOT gate operation.Simulation experiments were conducted to analyze embedding concealment and visual quality of the embedded steganographic images.Results demonstrate that the quantum circuit based on quantum CNOT gate operation not only enhances the embedding concealment but also improves the peak signal-to-noise ratio at the embedding capacity of 2 bits per pixel by 10% compared with the traditional least significant bit method.Thus, this operation achieves the lossless recovery of the original quantum carrier image.This study also provides certain theoretical importance and practical value for the security authentication and protection of quantum images.
One of the most considering matters in the field of quantum information processing is quantum data hiding including quantum steganography and quantum watermarking. This field is an efficient tool for protecting any kind of digital data. In this paper, three quantum color images steganography algorithms are investigated based on Least Significant Bit (LSB). The first algorithm employs only one of the image’s channels to cover secret data. The second procedure is based on LSB XORing technique, and the last algorithm utilizes two channels to cover the color image for hiding secret quantum data. The performances of the proposed schemes are analyzed by using software simulations in MATLAB environment. The analysis of PSNR, BER and Histogram graphs indicate that the presented schemes exhibit acceptable performances and also theoretical analysis demonstrates that the networks complexity of the approaches scales squarely.
In this paper, a quantum color image watermarking scheme is proposed through twice-scrambling of Arnold transformations and steganography of least significant bit (LSB). Both carrier image and watermark images are represented by the novel quantum representation of color digital images model (NCQI). The image sizes for carrier and watermark are assumed to be [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], respectively. At first, the watermark is scrambled into a disordered form through image preprocessing technique of exchanging the image pixel position and altering the color information based on Arnold transforms, simultaneously. Then, the scrambled watermark with [Formula: see text] image size and 24-qubit grayscale is further expanded to an image with size [Formula: see text] and 6-qubit grayscale using the nearest-neighbor interpolation method. Finally, the scrambled and expanded watermark is embedded into the carrier by steganography of LSB scheme, and a key image with [Formula: see text] size and 3-qubit information is generated at the meantime, which only can use the key image to retrieve the original watermark. The extraction of watermark is the reverse process of embedding, which is achieved by applying a sequence of operations in the reverse order. Simulation-based experimental results involving different carrier and watermark images (i.e. conventional or non-quantum) are simulated based on the classical computer’s MATLAB 2014b software, which illustrates that the present method has a good performance in terms of three items: visual quality, robustness and steganography capacity.