Medical JPEG image steganography method according to the distortion reduction criterion based on an imperialist competitive algorithm
Hamidreza Damghani, Farshid Babapour Mofrad, Leila Damghani · IET Image Processing · 2021
Abstract In most of the digital steganography methods provided for natural digital images, the embedding of the confidential message is based on the minimisation of the defined distortion functions. It is often done based on choosing the most optimal criterion of distortion. Although the distortion functions are designed innovatively, steganography algorithms will be optimal. In such approaches, embedding interactions are often overlooked. Unlike usual images that have areas with a variety of tissue features, there are many smooth areas in medical images that will make the changes more visible if they are manipulated. Therefore, this study presents an adaptive approach that comes from the interactions between the changes made during the embedding algorithm to reduce the probability of recognising the message embedded in medical images and reducing the distortion caused by embedding in a discrete cosine transform space and based on the imperialist competitive algorithm for joint photographic experts group images, especially in medical images due to the importance of information steganography in them. The results obtained show the high efficiency of the proposed algorithm in comparison with the state‐of‐the‐art methods that are presented in this area.