A Novel Color Image Hiding Scheme Using Block Truncation Coding

In this paper, a novel color image hiding scheme that is capable of hiding two color secret images into a color host image is proposed. The secret images to be embedded are first compressed by the single bit map block truncation coding. DES encryption is then conducted on the compressed message before the secret image is embedded into the rightmost 3, 2, 3 bits of the R, G, B channels of every pixel in the host image. The experimental results show that our scheme provides an average secret image quality of 29.220 dB. In addition to the improved quality of both host images and retrieved secret images, our scheme further strengthens the protection of the secret images by conducting image compression and DES encryption on the secret image in advance. Therefore, our scheme not only extends the hiding capability of host images, but also is practical and secure.