Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) based Data Hiding in Image Complex Region

This paper presents data an Ant colony optimization (ACO) based data
hiding technique. ACO is used to detect complex region of cover image and
afterward, least significant bits (LSB) substitution is used to hide secret
information in the detected complex regions’ pixels. ACO is an algorithm
developed inspired by the inborn manners of ant species. The ant leaves
pheromone on the ground for searching food and provisions. The proposed
ACO-based data hiding in complex region establishes an array of
pheromone, also called pheromone matrix, which represents the complex
region in sequence at each pixel position of the cover image. The pheromone
matrix is developed according to the movements of ants, determined by local
differences of the image element’s intensity. The least significant bits of
complex region pixels are substituted with message bits, to hide secret
information. The experimental results, provided, show the significance of the
performance of the proposed method.