Multi-morphological image data hiding based on the application of Rubik's cubic algorithm

Due to the emerging of digital right managements, digital libraries and fast development of multimedia, data hiding techniques are popularly utilized to hide annotations or confidential information in multimedia. In this paper, a novel data hiding mechanism based on the application of Rubik's cubic algorithm is proposed. The rationale of adopting Rubik's cubic is due to it possesses 6 faces and can be divided into 54 (6 faces*3*3) elements for scrambling process. In the beginning, the embedded image will be partitioned into different unit block sizes such pixel based, 3*3 pixels based, or other m*n pixels based. After then, 54 units will be selected sequentially and transformed into 6 faces according to the six faces of a Rubik's cubic by designated an index number. Therefore, an image can be partitioned into a lot of different 54 units based block and formed a lot of different Rubik's cubic. Each Rubik's cubic will be assigned a different random number for performing rotation to scramble the sequence of original 54 units. The proposed data hiding mechanism can achieve the benefits of reversible and lossless reconstruction of hidden data and host image without utilizing any information from the original host image. It is not only obtaining good visual quality for the stego-image, but also possesses high hiding capacity. Moreover, the proposed data hiding mechanism can be performed in spatial domain, frequency domain, and hybrid domains. It is also can be combined with encipher system to strengthen data security.