A Novel APVD Steganography Technique Incorporating Pseudorandom Pixel Selection for Robust Image Security

Abstract: Steganography is the process of embedding secret information discreetly within a carrier, ensuring secure exchange of confidential data. The Adaptive Pixel Value Differencing (APVD) steganography method, while effective, encounters certain challenges like the "unused blocks" issue. This problem can cause a decrease in security, compromise the embedding capacity, and lead to lower visual quality. This research presents a novel steganographic strategy that integrates APVD with pseudorandom pixel selection to effectively mitigate these issues. The results indicate that the new method outperforms existing techniques in aspects of security, data hiding capacity, and the preservation of image quality. Empirical results reveal that the combination of APVD with pseudorandom pixel selection significantly enhances key image quality metrics such as Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR), Universal Image Quality Index (UIQ), and Structural Similarity Index (SSIM), surpassing other contemporary methods in performance. The newly proposed method is versatile, able to handle a variety of cover and secret images in both color and grayscale, thereby ensuring secure data transmission without compromising the aesthetic quality of the image.