Increasing compression of JPEG images using steganography

In this paper, we focus on the problem of improving image compression through steganography. Even if the purposes of digital steganography and data compression are by definition contradictory, these techniques might be used jointly to compress and to hide information within the same digital support. A novel image compression scheme, employing steganography to decrease the data file size, is investigated. That is, data compression is performed twice under this point of view. Using at first, the conventional standard JPEG which reduces redundant data, taking advantage of the energy compaction property, and secondly, by means of steganography which embeds some bits-blocks within its subsequent blocks of the same image. The embedded bits do not increase the file size of the compressed image, but as they are taken from and hidden within the image itself, the file size will be further decreased. Experimental results show that this promising technique has a wide potential in image coding.