Abstract

Steganography is a method of hiding secret messages in a cover object while communication takes place between sender and receiver. Generally data embedding is achieved in text, image, audio, video, network for the purpose of secret communication. This paper proposes a secure method for hiding text based on adaptive pixel pair matching (APPM). The basic idea of Pixel Pair Matching (PPM) is to use the values of pixel pair as a reference coordinate, and search a coordinate in the neighborhood set of this pixel pair according to a given message digit. The pixel pair is then replaced by the searched coordinate to conceal the digit. APPM allows users to select digits in any notational system for data embedding, and thus achieves a better image quality. Compared with the optimal pixel adjustment process (OPAP) Method and diamond encoding (DE), the proposed method always has lower distortion for various payloads. This paper proposes an extension to conceal text into an image for conveying secret messages confidentially.