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Published in IET Image Processing

Received on 22nd December 2008
Revised on 4th March 2009
doi: 10.1049/iet-ipr.2008.0251

ISSN 1751-9659

A new steganographic scheme based on vector

quantisation and search-order coding
C.-C. Lee W.-H. Ku S.-Y. Huang
Department of Information and Communication Engineering, Asia University, No. 500, Lioufeng Road, Wufeng Shiang,
Taichung, Taiwan 413
E-mail: cclee@asia.edu.tw

Abstract: In this paper, the authors propose a new steganographic scheme based on vector quantisation (VQ) and
search-order coding (SOC).The capacity of the proposed scheme is higher than others based on VQ and the quality of
stego-image is acceptive. In general, the capacity of the schemes based on VQ is usually 1-bit per block. In 2004, Yu
et al. proposed a scheme to increase the capacity to 3-bit per pair of blocks. In the proposed scheme, the authors
utilised multiple codebooks and chose the combinations of per pair of blocks, to embed the secret data.The capacity
was increased to 6-bit per pair of blocks, and the quality was identical Yu et al.’s scheme.

1 Introduction The most well-known data hiding scheme in the spatial

Computer and network communication techniques have
developed quickly in recent years People attach great
importance to secret communication. For this reason,
hidden information is being proposed. Hidden information
techniques are mainly classified into two categories:
copyright marking and steganography [1]. Copyright
marking such as a signature or a trademark is used to
embed copyright information into the host image, thus
ensuring the copyright. The emphasis on copyright
marking is that the watermark hidden in the host image
must be able to be retrieved, even if the stego-image has
been subjected to lots of manipulation, such as cropping,
lossy compression, resizing etc. A watermark is usually very
small and composed of visible and imperceptible images.
Steganography is different from watermarking. The goal of
steganography is to embed secret data into the host image, in
such a way that the interceptors perceive its presence. In other
words, steganography provides a secret communication [2].
The key issues in steganography are how to embed more
secret data and yet maintain the stego-image’s good quality.
The technique of data hiding in images can be classified
into two categories: data hiding in spatial domain schemes
and data hiding in frequency domain schemes. Neither data
hiding in spatial domain schemes nor data hiding in
frequency domain schemes can be used in other domains.
domain is least-significant-bits substitution (LSB) [3]. It
uses the invisible to the human visual system differences
between the host image and stego-image to hide data.
There are many well-known schemes based on LSB, such
as optimal LSB, LSB matching, pixel-value differencing
multiple-based notational system, and using side match
[4 – 11]. There are some data hiding schemes using vector
quantisation (VQ) compression in the spatial domain,
those are different from the schemes mentioned above
[1, 12 – 15]. Due to a high compression of VQ, the
capacity for hiding data and the data traffic are much less
than the mentioned schemes.
In this paper, our proposed scheme is in the spatial
domain, based on VQ and search-order coding (SOC) [14,
16]. Prior to this research, the capacity of the schemes
based on VQ was usually 1-bit per block [1, 12, 13]. In
2004, Yu et al. [15] proposed a scheme to increase the
capacity to 3-bit per pair of blocks. In this paper, we use
multiple codebooks and choose different combinations of
per pair of blocks. The capacity is increased to 6-bit per
pair of blocks, and the quality is as good as in Yu et al.’s
scheme.
This paper is organised as follows. In the next section, we
shall briefly review VQ and SOC. In Section 3, we shall
propose a new scheme based on VQ and SOC. Next, we

IET Image Process., 2009, Vol. 3, Iss. 4, pp. 243 – 248 243
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shall compare our scheme with other schemes. Finally, the

conclusion will be in Section 5.

2 Preliminaries
2.1 VQ
VQ is a technique which can be used to compress the size of
image. As it is a low-bit-rate and lossy compression, VQ can
efficiently reduce the size of the image.

In Fig. 1 [12], suppose that there exists an image, VQ will

divide the image into many blocks of k * k pixels (usually, k is
equal to 4), and strand these pixels into a k 2-dimension
vector. Then we can find out the N mean vectors (usually
N ¼ 256) of all vectors creating a codebook, giving each of
them an index, and mean vectors. After creating the
codebook, each block is encoded by an index of the closest
codeword in this codebook. Finally, the indices table and
codebook are sent to the receiver. The image can be recovered
Figure 2 Search path and an example
from the indices table and codebook, but it is different from
the original image. In other words, the image will be distorted. a Search path
b Example of SOC algorithm with a 4  4 index table

2.2 SOC
The SOC algorithm which was a compression for VQ
indices was proposed by Hsieh and Tsai in 1996 [16]. The
authors found that it was easy to identify the blocks with
the same index around its neighbours in VQ indices table.
SP like SP (2, 2), (2, 4) and (3, 1). If their values had been
noted before, they would be neglected. If no SP is equal to
53, the search centre will be noted as the original VQ index
value (00110101)2 (¼53) and a 1-bit indicator (1)2 will be
added in front of the VQ index value.

Let us describe SOC briefly as follows. For example, in

Fig. 2b [1, 16], if a 2-bit SOC code is used, point (3, 3) is the
search centre which needs to be encoded, point (3, 2) is the
search starting point, and the default search path is shown in
Fig. 2a. After the coding process has started, the search
centre is set to 53. The search path for the same index starts
from search point SP (3, 2). Because SP (3, 2) is not marked
as 53, it is noted as (00)2 , and moved forward to the next SP.
Similarly, SP (2, 3) is marked as (01)2 and the search
continued. Finally, SP (2, 1) is found and equal to 53, it is
noted as (10)2 . The search centre is encoded with the SOC
code (10)2 and there will be a 1-bit indicator (0)2 added in
front of the SOC code (10)2 . There may exist some repetitive
3 Proposed scheme
Our proposed scheme is used in the spatial domain, and is
based on VQ and SOC. We use multiple codebooks and
choose the combinations of per pair of blocks to embed the
secret data. The embedding procedure and the extracting
procedure are described as follows.
3.1 Embedding procedure
In the proposed scheme, we want to apply four codebooks to
achieve the goal of embedding 6-bit secret data into pairs
of blocks. First, we create a codebook with 64 kind of

Figure 1 VQ for compressing image

244 IET Image Process., 2009, Vol. 3, Iss. 4, pp. 243– 248
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2009 doi: 10.1049/iet-ipr.2008.0251

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codewords by executing a VQ procedure, then make four
copies of that codebook and note them as CB1 , CB2 , CB3
and CB4 . These codebooks have the same codewords but
the indices are different, 0  63 belong to CB1 , 64  127
belong to CB2 , 128  191 belong to CB3 and 192  255
belong to CB4 . From these codebooks we then obtain a
super codebook with 256 codewords. Now, including the
idea of SOC, we will have eight choices for each block,
that is, (CB1 , CB2 , CB3 , CB4) by using VQ coding and
(CB1 , CB2 , CB3 , CB4) by using SOC coding. Enlarging

Table 1 Embedding table

Case 6-bits secret data First block Second block Case 6-bits secret data First block Second block
01 (000000)2 CB1(VQ) CB1(VQ) 33 (100000)2 CB3(VQ) CB1(VQ)
02 (000001)2 CB1(VQ) CB1(SOC) 34 (100001)2 CB3(VQ) CB1(SOC)
03 (000010)2 CB1(VQ) CB2(VQ) 35 (100010)2 CB3(VQ) CB2(VQ)
04 (000011)2 CB1(VQ) CB2(SOC) 36 (100011)2 CB3(VQ) CB2(SOC)
05 (000100)2 CB1(VQ) CB3(VQ) 37 (100100)2 CB3(VQ) CB3(VQ)
06 (000101)2 CB1(VQ) CB3(SOC) 38 (100101)2 CB3(VQ) CB3(SOC)
07 (000110)2 CB1(VQ) CB4(VQ) 39 (100110)2 CB3(VQ) CB4(VQ)
08 (000111)2 CB1(VQ) CB4(SOC) 40 (100111)2 CB3(VQ) CB4(SOC)
09 (001000)2 CB1(SOC) CB1(VQ) 41 (101000)2 CB3(SOC) CB1(VQ)
10 (001001)2 CB1(SOC) CB1(SOC) 42 (101001)2 CB3(SOC) CB1(SOC)
11 (001010)2 CB1(SOC) CB2(VQ) 43 (101010)2 CB3(SOC) CB2(VQ)
12 (001011)2 CB1(SOC) CB2(SOC) 44 (101011)2 CB3(SOC) CB2(SOC)
13 (001100)2 CB1(SOC) CB3(VQ) 45 (101100)2 CB3(SOC) CB3(VQ)
14 (001101)2 CB1(SOC) CB3(SOC) 46 (101101)2 CB3(SOC) CB3(SOC)
15 (001110)2 CB1(SOC) CB4(VQ) 47 (101110)2 CB3(SOC) CB4(VQ)
16 (001111)2 CB1(SOC) CB4(SOC) 48 (101111)2 CB3(SOC) CB4(SOC)
17 (010000)2 CB2(VQ) CB1(VQ) 49 (110000)2 CB4(VQ) CB1(VQ)
18 (010001)2 CB2(VQ) CB1(SOC) 50 (110001)2 CB4(VQ) CB1(SOC)
19 (010010)2 CB2(VQ) CB2(VQ) 51 (110010)2 CB4(VQ) CB2(VQ)
20 (010011)2 CB2(VQ) CB2(SOC) 52 (110011)2 CB4(VQ) CB2(SOC)
21 (010100)2 CB2(VQ) CB3(VQ) 53 (110100)2 CB4(VQ) CB3(VQ)
22 (010101)2 CB2(VQ) CB3(SOC) 54 (110101)2 CB4(VQ) CB3(SOC)
23 (010110)2 CB2(VQ) CB4(VQ) 55 (110110)2 CB4(VQ) CB4(VQ)
24 (010111)2 CB2(VQ) CB4(SOC) 56 (110111)2 CB4(VQ) CB4(SOC)
25 (011000)2 CB2(SOC) CB1(VQ) 57 (111000)2 CB4(SOC) CB1(VQ)
26 (011001)2 CB2(SOC) CB1(SOC) 58 (111001)2 CB4(SOC) CB1(SOC)
27 (011010)2 CB2(SOC) CB2(VQ) 59 (111010)2 CB4(SOC) CB2(VQ)
28 (011011)2 CB2(SOC) CB2(SOC) 60 (111011)2 CB4(SOC) CB2(SOC)
29 (011100)2 CB2(SOC) CB3(VQ) 61 (111100)2 CB4(SOC) CB3(VQ)
30 (011101)2 CB2(SOC) CB3(SOC) 62 (111101)2 CB4(SOC) CB3(SOC)
31 (011110)2 CB2(SOC) CB4(VQ) 63 (111110)2 CB4(SOC) CB4(VQ)
32 (011111)2 CB2(SOC) CB4(SOC) 64 (111111)2 CB4(SOC) CB4(SOC)

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the idea to pairs of blocks, there will be 64 combinations
which can be used. Finally, an embedding table for the
6-bit secret data is created, shown in Table 1. This table
can be created as you wish and it must be shared between
the sender and the receiver.
The embedding procedure is described as follows:
1. For example, assume that a sender wants to embed
(000111)2 in a pair of blocks. According to Table 1, he/
she can find that (000111)2 is in the eighth case, the
encoding choices of the first block and second block are
CB1 with VQ and CB4 with SOC, respectively.
2. Search the index of the first block in CB1 , suppose it is
60 ¼ (00111100)2 , and add a 1-bit indicator (1)2 in front
of the index to indicate it that is a VQ code. (100111100)2
is the final code of the first block.
VQ. Then the receiver will find that the indicator is (0)2 in
the second block, it means this is a SOC code, and the
code is (10)2 . The receiver can find that the VQ code is
250 ¼ (11111010)2 by executing a SOC search. The
receiver knows that it is an index in CB4 after looking up
the super codebook. The receiver obtain the first block
coded by CB1 with VQ and the second block coded by
CB4 with SOC; then the receiver will find that the secret
data are (000111)2 in this pair of blocks by looking for the
embedding table.
4 Comparison
As we know, the key issues in steganography are how to
embed more secret data and still maintain the stego-
image’s good quality. The comparisons of embedding
capacity and image quality of Chang et al.’s [1] scheme, Yu
et al.’s [15] scheme and our proposed scheme are as follows.

3. Search the index of the second block in CB4 , suppose it is
250 ¼ (11111010)2 , then the sender finds the SOC code,
that is (10)2 , by executing SOC search. Add a 1-bit
indicator (0)2 in front of the index to indicate that it is a
SOC code. (010)2 is the final code of the second block.
4. Execute (1), (2) and (3) until all the secret data are
embedded.
To compare the performance, the six gray-scale 512  512
host images are toys, couple, boats, barbara, baboon and
peppers, with the results shown in Table 2 [16]. According
to the experimental results, we can find that the embedding
capacity of the proposed scheme is twice as good as Yu
et al.’s scheme. The average capacity of our proposed
scheme is 49 152 bits, whereas Yu et al.’s scheme is 24 576
only.

5. Send the super codebook and all the codes to the receiver. The common way to compare the quality of two images is
to compute the peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), the
3.2 Extracting procedure formula is as follows:
Note that the sender and the receiver share the embedding
table and the super codebook is transmitted with those 2552
PSNR ¼ 10 log10 (dB)
codes after the embedding procedure. To continue the MSE
example in the embeddiing procedure, the receiver will find
that the indicator is (1)2 in the first block when the receiver where
wants to extract the secret data. It means that this is a VQ
code, and the code is 60 ¼ (00111100)2 . The receiver can   M1
X NX1
1
look up the super codebook and find out that it is an index MSE ¼ (P(i, j)  P 0 (i, j))2
M N i¼0 j¼0
in CB1 . Note that the first block is coded by CB1 with

Table 2 Comparisons of embedding capacity

[1] [15] The proposed scheme

Images Embedded Embedded data Embedded Embedded data Embedded Embedded data
Blocks (bits) blocks (bits) blocks (bits)
toys 16 384 16 384 16 384 24 576 16 384 49 152
couple 16 384 16 384 16 384 24 576 16 384 49 152
boats 16 384 16 384 16 384 24 576 16 384 49 152
barbara 16 384 16 384 16 384 24 576 16 384 49 152
baboon 16 384 16 384 16 384 24 576 16 384 49 152
peppers 16 384 16 384 16 384 24 576 16 384 49 152
average 16 384 16 384 16 384 24 576 16 384 49 152

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Table 3 Comparisons of image quality

VQ [1] [15] Proposed scheme

Images
PSNR PSNR Distortion PSNR Distortion PSNR Distortion
toys 28.104 28.104 0 27.627 0.476 27.627 0.476
couple 27.269 27.269 0 26.826 0.443 26.826 0.443
boats 27.901 27.901 0 27.582 0.319 27.582 0.319
barbara 25.380 25.380 0 25.063 0.317 25.063 0.317
baboon 24.252 24.252 0 23.987 0.265 23.987 0.265
peppers 28.775 28.775 0 28.303 0.471 28.303 0.471
average 26.947 26.947 0 26.565 0.382 26.565 0.382

and M is the length of image, N is the width of image, P (i, j)
is the value of the host image in pixel (i, j) and P 0 (i, j) is the
value of the stego-image in pixel (i, j) [2]. The larger the
value of PSNR, the better the image quality will be. The
comparisons of image quality are shown in Table 3 [16].
The results show that the image quality of the proposed
scheme is the same as Yu et al.’s scheme, because
SOC is an undistorted coding, the image quality will not
be affected.
5 Conclusions
A high capacity data hiding scheme for VQ compressed
image is presented in this paper. The proposed scheme can
embed 6-bit secret data for per pair for VQ blocks, and the
image quality is the same as the Yu et al.’s schemes. The
proposed scheme can fend off the image compression
attack, which is a common problem in those data hiding
schemes used in the spatial domain.
6 Acknowledgment
This research was partially supported by the National Science
Council, Taiwan, Republic of China under contract no.:
NSC97-2218-E-468-010.
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doi: 10.1049/iet-ipr.2008.0251