Open Access

ARTICLE

Image Hiding with High Robustness Based on Dynamic Region Attention in the Wavelet Domain

Zengxiang Li¹, Yongchong Wu², Alanoud Al Mazroa³, Donghua Jiang⁴, Jianhua Wu⁵, Xishun Zhu^6,*

1 Department of Information Engineering, Gongqing College, Nanchang University, Jiujiang, 332020, China
2 School of Information Engineering, Gongqing Institute of Science and Technology, Jiujiang, 332020, China
3 Department of Information Systems, College of Computer and Information Sciences, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, 11671, Saudi Arabia
4 School of Computer Science and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 511400, China
5 School of Information Engineering, Nanchang University, Nanchang, 330031, China
6 School of Mathematics and Statistics, Hainan Normal University, Haikou, 571158, China

* Corresponding Author: Xishun Zhu. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Emerging Technologies in Information Security )

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2024, 141(1), 847-869. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmes.2024.051762

Received 14 March 2024; Accepted 26 June 2024; Issue published 20 August 2024

Abstract

Hidden capacity, concealment, security, and robustness are essential indicators of hiding algorithms. Currently, hiding algorithms tend to focus on algorithmic capacity, concealment, and security but often overlook the robustness of the algorithms. In practical applications, the container can suffer from damage caused by noise, cropping, and other attacks during transmission, resulting in challenging or even impossible complete recovery of the secret image. An image hiding algorithm based on dynamic region attention in the multi-scale wavelet domain is proposed to address this issue and enhance the robustness of hiding algorithms. In this proposed algorithm, a secret image of size 256 × 256 is first decomposed using an eight-level Haar wavelet transform. The wavelet transform generates one coefficient in the approximation component and twenty-four detail bands, which are then embedded into the carrier image via a hiding network. During the recovery process, the container image is divided into four non-overlapping parts, each employed to reconstruct a low-resolution secret image. These low-resolution secret images are combined using dense modules to obtain a high-quality secret image. The experimental results showed that even under destructive attacks on the container image, the proposed algorithm is successful in recovering a high-quality secret image, indicating that the algorithm exhibits a high degree of robustness against various attacks. The proposed algorithm effectively addresses the robustness issue by incorporating both spatial and channel attention mechanisms in the multi-scale wavelet domain, making it suitable for practical applications. In conclusion, the image hiding algorithm introduced in this study offers significant improvements in robustness compared to existing algorithms. Its ability to recover high-quality secret images even in the presence of destructive attacks makes it an attractive option for various applications. Further research and experimentation can explore the algorithm’s performance under different scenarios and expand its potential applications.

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Keywords

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