An image steganography based on Multi-Layered Syndrome-Trellis Codes in DWT domain

A good method to improve the security of Steganography System is to embed messages by minimizing a sum of per-pixel distortions and the near-optimal codes for this minimization problem is the Syndrome-Trellis Codes (STCs). This paper will use the non-binary embedding operations with Multi-Layered Syndrome-Trellis Codes (ML-STCs) to design image steganography method instead of simply binary embedding operation with STCs. First, a distortion function in discrete wavelet transform domain was designed according to human visual system and integer lifting wavelet transform, which mainly concerned about the influences of frequency, luminance and texture masking factor to the cover distortion. And then, the Multi-Layered Syndrome-Trellis Codes was combined with the distortion function to propose the steganography method, so make sure that the embedding impact to the cover minimizing and centralize in un-sensitivity domain. Experiment results show that the proposed approach maintains a good visual quality of stego-image and have a high security against steganalysis in space and wavelet domain.