Theory and applications of data hiding in still images

There are several applications in image communication where digital data is incorporated into the image. These applications include digital watermarking for intellectual property protection and authentication, captioning, and steganography in which two or more parties can communicate through an invisible or “subliminal” covert communication channel. These applications range in the amount of data embedded, security, hostility of the attack and protection against deliberate or incidental attacks. This research examines the issue of information hiding in still images and its application to digital multimedia applications. It develops a general model for still images as a constrained type covert communication channel. Novel schemes for data embedding are developed for different data hiding applications such digital watermarking and steganography. Tradeoffs between data emedding capacity, security, and robustness to attacks are examined. Information theoretic approaches are developed to give bounds for estimating the capacity to hide information for these schemes. Analysis and design for these schemes for data hiding application is discussed.