High Capacity Image Data Hiding of Scanned Text Documents Using Improved Quadtree

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel steganography method that leverages the sparse nature of scanned text documents, converting them into binary form and using an improved quadtree to embed more data into host images securely.

Contribution

The proposed method introduces a new approach for high-capacity text document hiding by exploiting document sparsity and an improved quadtree for better embedding efficiency.

Findings

Higher embedding capacity than existing methods

Effective separation and compression of document parts

Suitable for secure transfer of text documents

Abstract

In this paper, an effective method was introduced to steganography of text document in the host image. In the available steganography methods, the message has a random form. Therefore, the embedding capacity is generally low. In the proposed method, the main underlying idea was the sparse property of scanned documents. The scanned documents were converted from gray-level form to binary values by halftoning idea and then the information-included parts were extracted using the improved quadtree and separated from document context. Next, in order to compress the extracted parts, an algorithm was proposed based on reading the binary string bits, ignoring the zero behind the number, and converting them to decimal values. Embedding capacity of the proposed method is higher than that of other available methods with a random-based message. Therefore, the proposed method can be used in the secure and intangible transfer of text documents in the host image.