High Payload Data Hiding Based on Just Noticeable Distortion Profile and LSB Substitution

The growth of the Internet with the rapid advance of technology raises consumers' concerns regarding threats to their personal privacy. Data hiding is a technique that conceals data into a carrier for conveying the secret message confidentially and do not show any visible marks to draw the attention of the intruders. In this study, the grayscale image is divided into non-overlapping blocks. In each block, calculates the sum of the just noticeable distortion profile of each pixel. Based on this value, the block is classified into four levels, such as, lower, lower-middle, high-middle, and higher. According to these levels, 2, 3, 4, and 5 bits can be embedded by using the least significant bit (LSB) substitution method. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme achieves high payload with acceptable image quality according to the human visual system (HVS).