Image Steganography Based on LSB Matching and Image Enlargement

Steganography plays a main role in data security field. It aims to cover important data within a cover medium such that the data existence remains confidential. The secret data is hidden in such a way that no one knows about it except the sender or the intended recipient. The least significant bit (LSB) substitution method is the most popular image steganography method for hiding a secret data in an image with high payload, while the human visual system (HVS) cannot notice any distortion in the resulted stego image. The proposed scheme employs the LSB matching method as a fundamental stage besides using the principle of an image enlargement. Image enlargement is used to extend the stego image dimensions, adding this step will distribute the secret data over the resulting image. Experimental results showed that the proposed method significantly had a high capacity with preserve image quality. Moreover, the secret data was embedded in non-consecutive pixel positions, which provides a high diffusion and lead to resist the image steganalysis effectively.