A high capacity image hiding method based on fuzzy image coding/decoding

Recently, a technique has been proposed for image hiding, that is based on block texture similarity where, blocks of secret image are compared with blocks of a set of cover images and the cover image with the most similar blocks to those of the secret image is selected as the best candidate cover image to conceal the secret image. In this paper, we propose a new image hiding method in which, the secret image is initially coded using a fuzzy coding/decoding method. By applying the fuzzy coder, each block of the secret image is compressed to a smaller block. In this way, after compressing the secret image to a smaller one, we hide it in a cover image. Obviously hiding a smaller secret image causes less distortion in the stego-image (the image that has secret image or data) and therefore higher quality stego-image is obtained. Consequently, the proposed method provides higher embedding rate and enhanced security.