A PSNR-Controllable Data Hiding Algorithm Based on LSBs Substitution

There are more and more systems using mobile devices to perform sensing task, but it increases the risk of leakage of personal privacy and data. Data hiding is one of the important ways for information security. Even many data hiding algorithms have worked on providing more hiding capacity or higher PSNR, there are few algorithms that can achieve effective control on PSNR while ensuring hiding capacity. In this paper, we first propose a novel encoding plan for data hiding with controllable PSNR based on LSBs substitution (PCDH). In PCDH, we use remainder algorithm to calculate the hidden information, and hide the secret information in the last x LSBs of every pixel. Theoretical proof shows that this method can control the variation of stego image from cover image and then control PSNR by adjusting parameters in remainder calculation. Then, we design the encoding and decoding algorithms with low computation complexity. Experimental results show that PCDH can control the PSNR in a given range while ensuring high hiding capacity. In addition, it can resist well some teganalysis. Compared to other algorithms, PCDH achieves better tradeoff among PSNR, hiding capacity, and computation complexity.