Efficient steganography based on a data decomposition mechanism

A novel steganographic scheme based on a mechanism of data decomposition is proposed. In this scheme, a secret message is represented as a sequence of digits in a notational system with a prime base. Each digit block is decomposed into a number of shares. These shares are then embedded in different cover images respectively. In each cover, a share is carried by a group of cover pixels and, at most, only one pixel in the group is increased or decreased by 1. That implies a high embedding efficiency, and therefore distortion introduced to the covers is low, leading to enhanced imperceptibility of the secret message. A further advantage of the scheme is that, even a part of stego-images are lost during transmission, the receiver can still extract embedded messages from the surviving covers.