A steganographic approach based on the chaotic fractional map and in the DCT domain

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel steganographic method that uses a chaotic fractional map and DCT domain to embed secret messages in images, enhancing imperceptibility and security.

Contribution

It presents a new embedding technique combining chaotic fractional maps with DCT coefficients, improving security and imperceptibility over existing methods.

Findings

Enhanced imperceptibility demonstrated by higher PSNR values.

Improved security confirmed through lower Relative Entropy.

Effective embedding in high frequency DCT coefficients.

Abstract

A steganographic method based on the chaotic fractional map and in the DCT domain is proposed. This method embeds a secret message in some high frequency coefficients of the image using a 128-bit private key and a chaotic fractional map which generate a permutation indicating the positions where the secret bits will be embedded. An experimental work on the validation of the proposed method is also presented, showing performance in imperceptibility, quality, similarity and security analysis of the steganographic system. The proposed algorithm improved the level of imperceptibility and Cachin's security of stego-system analyzed through the values of Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) and the Relative Entropy (RE).