A steganographic method for images with modulus function and modified LSB replacement based on PVD

In this paper, a steganographic method is presented for hiding data in images. This method uses the modified least significant bits (MLSB) and modulus function with pixel value differencing (MF&PVD) techniques. Using the proposed method the capacity of the hidden secret data and stego image quality are improved. First, a different value from two consecutive pixels using of the PVD method is obtained. A small difference value represents a smooth area and the large one denotes an edge area. In the smooth areas, the secret data is hidden into the cover image by MLSB method to achieve more capacity and better quality and in the edged areas the MF&PVD method is used. In the MLSB method first secret data is hidden into each block of image by standard k-LSB (k/2 bits of each pixel). Then, for improvement of stego image quality, difference between pixel of cover image and pixel of stego image is reduced by complementing the significant bits. In the MF&PVD method the secret data is embedded in remainder value of each block. Experimental results which are compared with the MF&PVD and other methods show that our proposed method can hide more information whereas the visual quality of stego image is also improved.