Abstract

Abstract. In this paper we propose a transparent, computationally simple and fast spatial domain data hiding technique for content (image and audio) authentication purposes. It can also be used in data captioning, copyright protection, confidentiality and integrity over the property distributed in digital formats over various transmission channels but its fragile nature prevents it to deliver efficient performance in such robust applications. Our method is based on concept that an image (host) can be transformed to another known image (target) by embedding controlled amount of distortion at that particular pixel value controlled through payload bits. Results obtained using MATLAB show that for lower distortion levels, PSNR values as high as 53dB while for appreciable distortions, not below the 35dB level are easily achievable. For our case, the capacity is image and distortion control parameter dependent, hence ranges from 500 bits to 33Kb for a 512x512x8 image requiring a computation time of 105 ms. Moreover, the same technique has also been applied to audio data and even better results obtained are reported. The attractive feature of the proposed algorithm is its simplicity in both embedding and detection of the payload bits, computational efficiency and apparent nature of marked information.