On Moderately Significant Bit Data Hiding Techniques for High-Definition Images

In this paper, we study moderately significant bit data hiding techniques for high-definition (HD) images. In contrast to least significant bit data hiding, we explore the potential of HD images to engage higher order bits for increasing the capacity of hiding secret images. In particular, the number of secret images embedded in moderately significant bits of a given cover image is successively increased to study the impact of this data hiding approach on image fidelity and image quality in the context of HD images. A comprehensive performance assessment is conducted on the stego-image carrying the secret images in terms of peak-signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity (SSIM) index. It is shown that HD images indeed offer the potential of hiding several images within certain image fidelity and objective perceptual image quality constraints of the resulting stego-HD images.