An image steganography for colour images using lossless compression technique

Least significant bit (LSB) is a commonly used spatial domain technique which is classified into LSB replacement, LSB matching and matrix embedding. This paper models an algorithm which gives less distortion in cover image during embedding process. Peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) is a familiar benchmark used in discriminating the quality of stego image over cover image. A Huffman encoded secret image bit stream is overlaid on the least significant bit of cover image through matrix embedding. As a result, the stego image is constructed with much less distortion when compared to the cover image ends up with higher PSNR value. A secret image which cannot be embedded in a normal LSB embedding technique can be overlaid in this proposed technique, since the secret image is Huffman encoded.