An innovative approach for pattern based image steganography

Currently, image steganography methods are becoming popular in the field of data authentication and image processing. This provides efficient way of communication between sender and receiver without any loss in the originality of the cover image. So, the present paper proposes a novel method called as pattern based image steganography. The proposed method allows the sender to embed the secret message into hierarchical divided sub sections. During the first stage, the input cover image is divided into 25×25 non overlapped windows. Then further each window is divided into 5×5 sub sections. Then among them, the sub sections will be selected based on the pattern `Z´. Next, in the second stage, within each selected 5×5 sub section, the pixels will be selected based on the pattern `a´. Finally, in the selected pixels, 1 bit Least Significant Method (LSB) is used for embedding the message. The proposed method is experimented with nine cover images and the performance of the proposed method is measured with several measures viz., Mean Square Error(MSE), Mean Absolute Error(MAE), Root Mean Square Error(RMSE), Peak Signal to Noise Ratio(PSNR), Signal to Noise Ratio(SNR). The results show the effeciency of the proposed method.