Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 35 (2023) 101604

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of King Saud University –

Computer and Information Sciences
journal homepage: www.sciencedirect.com

Implementation of a steganography system based on hybrid square

quaternion moment compression in IoMT
Mohamed Amine Tahiri a, Ahmed Bencherqui b, Hicham Karmouni c,⇑, Hicham Amakdouf d,
Seyedali Mirjalili e, Saad Motahhir b, Mohamed Abouhawwash f,g, S.S. Askar h, Mhamed Sayyouri b,
Hassan Qjidaa a
a
CED-ST, STIC, Laboratory of Electronic Signals and Systems of Information LESSI, Dhar El Mahrez Faculty of Science, Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah-Fez University, Fez 30000, Morocco
b
Engineering, Systems and Applications Laboratory, National School of Applied Sciences, Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Fez 30000, Morocco
c
National School of Applied Sciences, Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakech 40000, Morocco
d
Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Institute of Sports Sciences, Fez 30000, Morocco
e
Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research and Optimisation, Torrens University Australia, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane 4006, QLD, Australia
f
Department of Computational Mathematics, Science and Engineering (CMSE), College of Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
g
Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Mansoura University, Mansoura 35516, Egypt
h
Department of Statistics and Operations Research, College of Science, King Saud University, P.O. Box 2455, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) systems generate medical data transmissions between patients, med-
Received 3 February 2023 ical experts, and medical centers over public networks, which require high levels of security to protect
Revised 29 May 2023 the content of medical images and the personal information they contain. In this paper, we propose a
Accepted 30 May 2023
new stego image encryption scheme based on a new secret image compression method, wavelet trans-
Available online 5 June 2023
formation, QR decomposition of the cover image, and a new chaotic map. The secret image is compressed
by the Hahn-Krawtchouk hybrid quaternion square moments (HK-HQSM), which are optimized by a new
Keywords:
hybrid metaheuristic algorithm based on the Salp Swarm Algorithm (SSA) and the Arithmetic
Index Terms
Image steganography
Optimization Algorithm (AOA). To increase the security level when transmitting the proposed stego im-
Internet of Medical Things ages over public networks, we introduce a new chaotic map based on the 2D fractional Henon map to
Hybrid square moments encrypt the stego image. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed steganography scheme for
Optimization algorithm IoMT, we implemented this scheme on a low-cost Raspberry Pi 4 hardware board. The results of the per-
Raspberry Pi formed numerical experiments show that our method is secure and provides exceptional robustness
against common standard image processing attacks (steganalysis attacks). The results also demonstrate
that our strategy is able to work efficiently and quickly when implemented on a Raspberry Pi board.
Ó 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is an open access
article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

1. Introduction
To facilitate access to a variety of services, technological im-
provements have prompted authors to create smart applications
in many areas (Alghamdi et al. 2023; Cheng et al. 2021; Hajder
and Rauch 2021; Liao et al. 2021). Long distances, the cost of trav-
el, and the risk of infection are just some constraints that patients
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: mohamedamine.tahiri@usmba.ac.ma (M.A. Tahiri), ahmed.
bencherqui@usmba.ac.ma (A. Bencherqui), hicham.karmouni@usmba.ac.ma
(H. Karmouni), hicham.amakdouf@usmba.ac.ma (H. Amakdouf), ali.mirjalili@
torrens.edu.au (S. Mirjalili), saad.motahhir@usmba.ac.ma (S. Motahhir),
abouhaww@msu.edu (M. Abouhawwash), saskar@ksu.edu.sa (S.S. Askar),
mhamed.sayyouri@usmba.ac.ma (M. Sayyouri), hassan.qjidaa@usmna.ac.ma
(H. Qjidaa).
face when receiving care in the medical sector. IoMT is a new
technology developed to overcome all these hindrances. IoMT is
a collection of devices, sensors, and actuators interconnected via
computer networks to make patient health services more conve-
nient and accessible (Chanak and Banerjee 2020; Trujillo-Toledo
et al. 2021). IoMT systems disseminate patients’ medical informa-
tion through public networks to medical specialists for consulta-
tion. Patient information is susceptible to attack during
transmission due to the lack of privacy on public networks
(Karar, Alotaibi, and Alotaibi 2022; Kumar et al.). Therefore, en-
suring the security and privacy of medical data has become a cru-
cial necessity for a safe and effective IoMT system. Therefore, it is
necessary to find a technique that can ensure the confidentiality
and privacy of medical images while maintaining their qualities.
Several methods such watermarking, steganography, and cryp-

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2023.101604
1319-1578/Ó 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University.
This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
M.A. Tahiri, A. Bencherqui, H. Karmouni et al.
tography can be used to ensure the security of medical pho-
tographs (Abikoye et al. 2020; Al-Afandy et al. 2016). Image cryp-
tography is a popular technique for protecting the content of an
image from attackers by transforming the image into an unrecog-
nizable format known as an ‘‘encrypted” or ‘‘ciphered” image
(Benhfid, Ameur, and Taouil 2020; Nguyen, Arch-Int, and Arch-
Int 2016).
Steganography is a way to send secret information through nor-
mal communication channels. Steganographic methods are often
known by the term ‘‘hiding information.” In terms of security, en-
emies pay more attention to encrypted data that are exposed sep-
arately, no matter how secure it is (Arya and Soni 2018).
Steganography could be a way to encrypt information in authori-
tarian contexts where the use of cryptography could be problemat-
ic. In modern steganography, the message is encrypted and hidden
within digital content. Encoding and decoding techniques seem to
be the most important parts of any steganographic system used to-
day (Alhomoud 2021). The method of implementation takes into
account a hidden message, secret keys, and overlay objects that
will be used to send a message. The stego image is, in fact, the re-
sult of a process called ‘‘implementation”.
This paper proposes a steganographic image encryption system
that is based on a new method of compressing secret images that
uses the wavelet transform (DWT), QR decomposition, and a novel
chaotic map. The compression of the secret image is achieved
through the use of Hahn- Krawtchouk hybrid square quaternionic
moments (HK-HQSM). It is important to note that the selection of
the parameters for HK-HQSM is critical to the success of the pro-
posed system. To this end, we have introduced a new metaheuris-
tic optimization algorithm (H-SSAOA) that is based on the Salp
swarming algorithm (SSA) and the arithmetic optimization algo-
rithm (AOA). To increase the security level when transmitting the
proposed stego images over public networks, we introduce a new
chaotic map 2D fractional modified Sinus-Henon map (2D-
FrSHM) based on the 2D fractional Henon map to encrypt the stego
Fig. 1. Classification of popular steganography methods.
2
Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 35 (2023) 101604
image. In order to really and practically prove the effectiveness of
the proposed steganography scheme for IoMT, we implemented
this scheme on a low-cost Raspberry Pi 4 hardware board (Liao
et al. 2021; Loy et al. 2021). The results show that our method is
secure and provides exceptional robustness against common at-
tacks in standard image processing. Moreover, the results also
show that our strategy is able to work efficiently and quickly when
implemented on a Raspberry Pi board. In summary, the contribu-
tions of this work are as follows:

Introduction of a new color image compression technique based
on HK-HQSM.

H-SSAOA applications to optimize hybrid moments in square
quaternions.

A proposal and illustration of the chaotic behavior of a two-
dimensional variant of the 2D-FrSHM modified Henon fraction-
al map.

Implementation of the proposed steganography scheme on a
Raspberry Pi board, taking advantage of the board’s parallel pro-
cessing capabilities and its low price.
Before presenting the fundamental sections of this paper, we
first focus on the most well-known steganography methods in
the literature. We should note that steganography methods are
grouped mainly into three categories (Pham et al., 2019;
Volkhonskiy et al., 2020) (see Fig. 1):

Statistical methods of image steganography.

Image steganography methods based on CNN.

Image steganography methods based on GAN.
For more details on the techniques presented above, we have
set up Table 1, which contains the following information: the data-
base on which the researchers worked, metrics used to test effec-
tiveness and robustness, and benefits and drawbacks.
 M.A. Tahiri, A. Bencherqui, H. Karmouni et al. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 35 (2023) 101604

After a general introduction and the presentation of some relat-

The image size is 64x64, so it may not contain much

The image size is 64x64, so it may not contain much

The image size is 64x64, so it may not contain much

The method is less secure, as well as the secret information is

network search for selecting the embedding scheme is time

ed works, we organize the rest of the paper as follows: in the sec-

There are no privacy plans in place to prevent these attacks

experiments show that steganography is not secure enough
ond section, we focus on the proposed HK-HQSM compression
methods and the proposed 2D-FrSHM. We devote the third section
to introducing the proposed steganography scheme for IoMTs. In
the fourth section, we presented the simulation and experimental
results.

2. Preliminary and essential definitions

Input images are just concatenated

Input images are just concatenated

In this section, we will discuss two important axes that are con-

Stego images are not clear

sidered the main pillars of the security scheme that will be proposed
later. The first subsection is devoted to introducing the compression
method via the optimized moments in the HK-HQSM, while the sec-
ond subsection presents the proposed 2D-FrSHM.
information.

information

information

Less secure

Less secure

consuming
2.1. Compression via the proposed HK-HQSM optimized moments
limitation

limitation

limitation
texts

a. Hahn-Krawtchouk square quaternion moments

In paper (Tahiri et al. 2022), a thorough and complete study is

An error backpropagation feature is introduced to speed

Reduced execution time as well as arbitrary image

The width and height of the hidden image can be any

Robustness when extracting the hidden image even

presented in which we propose four hybrid moments formed from

up the training phase, in addition to using a basic CNN

Domain knowledge is not required for embedding

the Hahn moments and their corresponding polynomial (HPs)

introduce the formulation of the game theory

Hða;bÞ
n ðx; NÞ that we also proposed in paper (Tahiri et al. 2020) and

Basic and minimum architecture is used

the Krawtchouk moments and their corresponding polynomial

(KPs) K pn ðx; N Þ (Tahiri et al. 2022). These new moments are divided
into two categories: the first category is formed from the orthogo-
nal separable Hahn-Krawtchouk moments (DHKPs) and
Krawtchouk-Hahn moments (DKHPs), while the second category
with loss of information

Reduced execution time

Reduced execution time

Image is secret message

Image is secret message

Image is secret message

is formed from the square of the first category DHKPs and DKHPs;
they will be called Hahn-Krawtchouk squared (SHKPs) and
format is accepted

Krawtchouk-Hahn squared (SKHPs).

In this paper, we have extended the square Hahn-Krawtchouk
moments (SHKPs) to quaternion moments; this type of moment
architecture
advantages

advantages

advantages

improves the imperceptibility and robustness requirements of

size

the proposed security scheme. In addition, the large number of pa-

rameters possessed by the SHKP moments can be used as addition-
al secret keys to improve the security of the proposed security
and

and

Alice, Bob and Eve
architecture /Dataset

architecture /Dataset

scheme. Note that Moments-SHKPs are based on the second form

The database/metric

Lena and Baboon

Encoder-decoder

PSNR and Time

PSNR and MSE

 SHKP

1 RGB image

polynomial P n ðxÞ (Eq.1), and the latter is based on the first form

ImageNet

ImageNet

ImageNet

BOSSbase

 DHKP
Holiday

ðxÞ.

DCGAN

DCGAN

polynomial Pn

CelebA
celebA

U-Net

PSNR

Lena

CNN

DTD

 Form 1 P p
N1  a; b
Pn ð xÞ ¼ K j ðxÞHj ðnÞ; n; x ¼ 0; 1; 2; :::; N  1
j¼0 ð1Þ
Image steganography methods based on

 DHKP
¼ Pn ðxÞ
The steganography method in image

GAN-based image steganography

 Form 2 P  DHKP
N1  DKHP
Pn ð xÞ ¼ Pi ðxÞPi ðnÞ; n ¼ 0; 1; 2; ::::; N  1
ð2Þ
Summary of details on popular steganography methods.

i¼0
 SHKP
¼ Pn ðxÞ
 DHKP
Note that the two polynomials of the first form Pn ðxÞ and sec-
 SHKP
statistics

methods

ond form Pn ðxÞ satisfy the following orthogonality condition

CNN

(Yamni et al. 2021):

X
N1  
P n ðxÞPm ðxÞ ¼ dnm ; n ¼ 0; 1; 2; ::::; N  1 ð3Þ
(Al-Afandy et al. 2016)

(Arya and Soni 2018)

10(Patel and Meena

x¼0
(Pham et al. 2019)
(Duan et al. 2019)

(Duan et al. 2018)

(Chen et al. 2022)

(Shi et al. 2017)

(Shi et al. 2019)

 SHKP
After presenting the square polynomial Pn ðxÞ, we introduce
 
2017)

the quaternary representation of the 2D moments QM SHKP

nm ðf Þ
Table 1

(Eq. (4) and their corresponding inverse IQMSHKP

nm ðf Þ (Eq. (6) of an
Ref

Ref

Ref

image f of size N  N.
3
M.A. Tahiri, A. Bencherqui, H. Karmouni et al. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 35 (2023) 101604

"   SHKP  SHKP#

P M1
N1 P number of iterations has been achieved. The optimal values are
QM SHKP p1ffiffi
nm ðf Þ ¼ 3
ðf Red ðx; yÞ þ f Green ðx; yÞ þ f Blue ðx; yÞÞ  P n ðxÞPm ðyÞ
x¼0 y¼0 generated as a result of this optimization.
"   SHKP  SHKP #
P M1
N1 P Algorithm 1 summarizes the proposed method for the optimal
 p13ffiffi i ðf Green ðx; yÞ  f Blue ðx; yÞÞ  Pn ðxÞPm ðyÞ
x¼0 y¼0 selection of QMSHKP
nm -quaternary parameter values using the H-
"   SHKP  SHKP #
P M1
N1 P SSAOA.
 p1ffiffi3 j ðf Blue ðx; yÞ  f Red ðx; yÞÞ  P n ðxÞP m ðyÞ
x¼0 y¼0
"   SHKP  SHKP #
P M1
N1 P Algorithm 1 (Optimal selection of QMSHKP
nm ðf Þ parameter values via
 p1ffiffi3 k ðf Red ðx; yÞ  f Green ðx; yÞÞ  Pn ðxÞP m ðyÞ
x¼0 y¼0 H-SSAOA).
ð4Þ
Inputs: Image function: f ðx; yÞ, the moment order: N max , the
Eq. (4) can be expressed by the following formula.
image size: N  M
QMSHKP ðf Þ ¼ A0 þ iA1 þ jA2 þ kA3 ð5Þ Output: Optimized QM SHKP nmoptimezd ðf Þ parameter
( )
opt opt
_ P opt
1 ; aopt
1 ; b 1 ; P opt opt
2 ; a2 ; b2
The inverse IQMSHKP
nm ðf Þ calculation is used to reconstruct the f
0
opt0 opt0 opt0 opt0 opt0
P opt
1 ; a1 ; b1 ; P 2 ; a2 ; b2
image.
Initialization of H-SSAOA
"   SHKP  SHKP #
P M1
N1 P Initialize the population size Np, M iter (maximum number of
IQM SHKP p1ffiffi
nm ðf Þ ¼ 3
ðA1 þ A2 þ A3 Þ  P n ðxÞP m ðyÞ iterations) et C iter (the current iteration)
x¼0 y¼0
" Initialize Salp positions X i ði ¼ 0; 1; 2; 3; :::; NpÞ.
  SHKP  SHKP #
N1 P
P M1 Dim = 12 (the dimension of the problem)
 p1ffiffi3 i ðA0 þ A2  A3 Þ  Pn ðxÞPm ðyÞ
0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0
x¼0 y¼0 Lb ¼ Parameter minimums of QMSHKP
"   SHKP  SHKP # 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0 nm
P M1
N1 P
 p1ffiffi3 j ðA0  A1 þ A3 Þ  Pn ðxÞPm ðyÞ Ub ¼
1; N; N; 1; N; N
Parameter maximums of QMSHKP
x¼0 y¼0 1; N; N; 1; N; N nm
"   SHKP  SHKP #
P M1
N1 P Evaluate the objective function MSE given by Eq. (7)
 p1ffiffi3 k ðA0 þ A1  A2 Þ  P n ðxÞP m ðyÞ While (C iter 6 Miter )
x¼0 y¼0
Using the objective function, evaluate each Salp in the
ð6Þ population.
_ Identify the best solution F
We should mention that the reconstructed image ( f ) is subject The MOA value was updated using Eq. (8) (Abualigah et al.
to some degradation compared to the original input signal (f ). This 2021).
 
degradation can be evaluated by the mean square error (MSE) MOAðC iter Þ ¼ MOAmin þ C iter  MOAmaxMMOA min
;
(Rabab et al. 2022) criterion given below: iter

C iter 2 ½1; M iter (8)

1 X X
N1 M1 _
2 The MOP value was updated using Eq. 9 with a as a
MSE ¼ f ðx; yÞ  f ðx; yÞ ð7Þ sensitive parameter, which defines the precision of the
N  M x¼0 y¼0
handling phase of AOA (Abualigah et al. 2021).
1=a
It should be noted that six parameters characterize the polyno- C iter
MOPðC iter Þ ¼ 1  1=a ; C iter 2 ½1; M iter (9)
 SHKP Miter
mial Pn ðxÞ make the task of calculating the quaternary QM SHKP
nm ðf Þ For i = 1 to N do
moments difficult because to perform this calculation without de- If (i == 1) Update the position of the Salp leader using Eq.
grading the original image, we must manipulate the 12 parameters 10, where the values of (r1, r2, and r3) are randomly
 0 0 
P1 ; a1 ; b1 ; P 2 ; a2 ; b2 ; P01 ; a01 ; b1 ; P02 ; a02 ; b2 that characterize the generated in the interval [0, 1].
8
> bestðxj Þ=ðMOP þ eÞ  ððUBj  LBj Þ  l þ LBj ÞÞ; r 2 < 0:5
QM SHKP
nm ðf Þ. We solved this in a previous article (Tahiri et al. 2022)
>
<
bestðxj Þ  MOP  ððUBj  LBj Þ  l þ LBj Þ Þ ; otherwise
X i ðC iter þ 1Þ ¼ (10)
through an experimental analysis where the parameters were se- >
>
:
bestðxj Þ  ðMOP þ eÞ  ððUBj  LBj Þ  l þ LBj ÞÞ; r 3 < 0:5
bestðxj Þ þ MOP  ððUBj  LBj Þ  l þ LBj Þ Þs ; otherwise
lected by eliminating the undesirable cases. However, when com-
Else Update the tracker position using Eq. (11) (Ibrahim et al.
pared to classical polynomials, the results obtained with this
2020).
 SHKP  
P n ðxÞ polynomial and their corresponding moments in applica- X ij ¼ 12 X ij þ X i1 (11)
j
tions such as compression and reconstruction remain limited. For
End if
this reason, we adopted the metaheuristic algorithm H-SSAOA pro-
End for
posed in (Amine et al. 2022) to appropriately select the 12
C iter ¼ C iter þ 1;
parameters.
End While
Return the best solution F
b. Hahn-Krawtchouk square quaternion moments opti-
mized via the H-SSAOA

This subsection describes the optimization process: First, we

practiced the reconstruction as an arbitrary application, consider- c. Image compression method via QM SHKP
nmoptimezd

ing the initial parameters of the hybrid H-SSAOA algorithm, the

 0 0 
12 initial parameters P 1 ; a1 ; b1 ; P2 ; a2 ; b2 ; P 01 ; a01 ; b1 ; P 02 ; a02 ; b2 ,
and the objective function ‘‘MSE.” Using the initial parameters,
we calculate the moment coefficients of the image to be recon-
structed using Eq. (4), then we reconstruct the image using Eq.
(6) and evaluate the value of the objective function MSE
(Amakdouf et al. 2021). This step is continued until the maximum
4
After optimizing the 12 parameters of QMSHKP
nm , it is used to com-
press large color images. Image compression techniques that rely
on discrete orthogonal polynomials involve segmenting the input
image into non-overlapping blocks to solve the numerical jitter
problem. However, since the input data are represented as blocks,
there is an intensity discontinuity problem for the image blocks.
M.A. Tahiri, A. Bencherqui, H. Karmouni et al. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 35 (2023) 101604

When compressing large images, using small blocks does not After a successful contribution to modifying a chaotic map (the
achieve a high compression ratio (CR) (Idan, Abdulhussain, and 3D fractional order Henon map (Amine et al. 2022)), this paper
Al-Haddad 2020). In order to solve these problems, an alternative proposes a modified 2D fractional order Henon map that will be
approach to image compression that uses QM SHKP
nmoptimezd has been pre-
used later to increase the security level of the proposed security
scheme.
sented. The full, high-resolution image is used as input for the pre-
Mathematically, the classical fractional Henon map (Rathore
sented method so that it can reach a high CR. Thus, these factors
ensure that the reconstructed, decompressed image does not con- and Pal 2021) (2D-FrHM) (Eq. (13)), with ðx; yÞ 2 R2 ; ða; cÞ 2 R2
tain visible artifacts after the reconstruction process. In addition, and t 2 ½0; 1 being the fractional order
the proposed compression method allows hidden data to be insert- 8 Pn
ed inside a digital medium by modifying its content without being
< xðnÞ ¼ xð0Þ þ 1 CðniþtÞ
yði  1Þ þ 1  a:x2 ði  1Þ  xði  1Þ
CðtÞ i¼1 Cðniþ1Þ
noticeable. We should note that CR is calculated by Eq. (12), where : yðnÞ ¼ yð0Þ þ Pn CðniþtÞ
i¼1 Cðniþ1Þ ðb:xði  1Þ  yði  1ÞÞ
1
CðtÞ
the value i depends on the class of the input color image:
ð13Þ
2i ð 3  N  M Þ
CR ¼ ð12Þ The chaotic property of the 2D Henon map Eq. (13) is destroyed
2j ð4  n  mÞ because of the propagation of numerical errors (overflow) that ap-
The proposed compression process is provided in detail below. pear during numerical computations of the outputs xðnÞ and yðnÞ
Step 1: Calculate the QMSHKP for high orders due to the existence of the non-elemental analytic
nmoptimezd of the input color image f of size
function gamma for example when n = 172 the value of the two
N  M and 3 RGB channels using Eq. (4).
outputs namely xðnÞ and yðnÞ tends to infinity with
Step 2: Build a file of the compressed image (a square matrix of
½a; b; xð0Þ; yð0Þ; t ¼ ½1:95; 0:001; 0:009; 0; 0:98.
size 2n  2m with n and m representing the order of QMSHKP
nmoptimezd ) by To solve the problem of numerical error propagation and build a
the concatenation of the four matrices A0 ; A1 ; A2 and A3 presented more stable map (Eq. (14). We expose the 2D-FrSHM, which over-
previously in Eq. (5). It should be noted that all coefficients in the comes the numerical instability problems during computation by
compressed image file are encoded at 64 bits. replacing xðnÞ ¼ CCðniþ1Þ
ðniþtÞ
with elnðxÞ . To increase the level of protec-
Step 3: Quantize all values of the compressed image file into an tion, we will make the map more complicated by including two ad-
optimal data class (int8, int16 or int32). This step is necessary to ditional parameters u1 ; u2 , each of which increases the amount of
minimize the storage space of the compressed image file.
space available for security keys. To ensure chaotic behavior of the
To validate the superiority of an optimized QM SHKP
nmoptimezd moment proposed system, we need to choose the values of the parameters
in terms of compression compared to QMSHKPnm moments and classi- u1 ; u2 in the interval ½0 ; 1:2: Note that when u1 ¼ u2 ¼ 0 the pro-
cal moments (KMs (Idan et al. 2020) and HMs (Daoui et al. 2020)). posed chaotic map Eq. (13) coincides with the classical 2D map Eq.
In Table 2, we perform a comparison in terms of MSE with different (14).
values of compression ratio (CR). For this test, we compressed an where ðx; yÞ 2 R2 ; ða; cÞ 2 R2 , t 2 ½0; 1 is the fractional order
image of size 1000  1000. The results obtained in Table. 2 show and jsinðiÞj is the absolute value of sinðiÞ.
the superiority of QMSHKP
nmoptimezd -moments over other moments. ( Pn
xðnÞ ¼ xð0Þ þ Cð1tÞ i¼1 A1  ð1  u1  jsinðiÞjÞ  eð lnðCðniþtÞÞlnðCðniþ1ÞÞÞ
QM SHKP
nmoptimezd -moments allow us to achieve very high compression ra- Pn
yðnÞ ¼ yð0Þ þ 1
CðtÞ i¼1 A2  ð1  u2  jsinðiÞjÞ  eð lnðCðniþtÞÞlnðCðniþ1ÞÞÞ
tios with excellent reconstruction quality for all orders.
ð14Þ

2.2. The proposed 2D fractional-order modified Sinus-Henon map (2D- with

FrSHM) (
A1 ¼ yði  1Þ þ 1  a:x2 ði  1Þ  xði  1Þ
Chaos theory applies to many models developed to explain situ- A2 ¼ b:xði  1Þ  yði  1Þ
ations encountered in almost all fields of scientific knowledge (Li
et al. 2020). The study of chaos therefore touches on broad fields To compare and visualize the behavior of the two maps,
of research, ranging from physics to psychology, economics, and 2D-FrSHM and 2D-FrHM, for several iterations (n = 2000), we
biology. In recent years, researchers have been oriented towards adopt the following parameters:½a; b; xð0Þ; yð0Þ; u1 ; u2 ; t ¼
the use of the chaotic systems known in the literature in the appli- ½1:95; 0:2; 0:001; 0:009; 0:3; 0:9; 0:98.
cations of 1D, 2D and 3D signal security (Chai et al. 2019; Hu et al. Since it is difficult to calculate the analytical solution of chaotic
2020). In addition, other researchers seek to create other chaotic systems, numerical methods are used. To demonstrate the chaotic
maps by modifying the chaotic maps. nature of the proposed 2D-FrSHM map, we display in Fig. 2 the
phase space and the bifurcation diagram. Fig. 2 (c, d) provides a
Table 2 graphical illustration of the solutions of these maps; this represen-
MSE values for deferent CR.
tation is often called the strange attractor. In our case, our attractor
Moments order n CR = 60%. CR = 80% represents the chaotic system with single points in space that de-
QM SHKP n = 250 0,008 0,044 fine a shape very similar to the shape of a half-oval. Fig. 2 (a, b)
nmoptimezd
n = 500 0.000125 0.000181 provides the bifurcation diagram of the 2D-FrHM map and the
n = 1000 3.0541e-07 3.0541e-06 2D-FrSHM map. From Fig. 2 (a), we can see that the bifurcations
M SHKP n = 250 0 0.67 0 0.69
nm (Tahiri et al. 2022) occur when a 2 ½0:8; 1:4, which indicates that the system is chaotic
n = 500 0.56 0.57
n = 1000 0.34 0.39 in the interval a 2 ½0:8; 1:4. However, the 2D-FrHM map is not
KMs (Idan et al. 2020) n = 250 0 0.45 0 0.47 chaotic for intervals a 2 ½0:8; 1:4, especially in the regions repre-
n = 500 0 0.43 0 0.49 sented as ‘‘white spaces” in the diagram.
n = 1000 0.22 0 0.24 In this section, we discuss two fundamental pillars of this paper,
HMs (Daoui et al. 2020) n = 250 0 0.50 0 0.54
n = 500 0 0.41 0 0.43
the first being optimized moment-based compression, while the
n = 1000 0 0.15 0 0.17 second presents the 2D-FrSHM. We will present the new stego
image encryption scheme.
5
M.A. Tahiri, A. Bencherqui, H. Karmouni et al. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 35 (2023) 101604

Fig. 2. (a, d) The bifurcation diagram of the  sequence varying the ‘‘a” parameter a 2 ½0:8; 1:4 (c, d) 2D phase space (x, y).

3. The proposed stego image encryption scheme in IoMTs. Step 2: For the blue plane of the cover image IH ðx; yÞ, we decom-
pose it into four equal subwaves LLk ; LHk ; HLk and HHk , where
Healthcare professionals need to have the ability to exchange k ¼ log2 M
N
is based on the multiple transformation K-DWT. On
images with each other as well as with hospitals to make fast the other hand, the secret image IW ðx; yÞ (the image of Alzheimer’s
and accurate diagnoses without risking patient privacy, including disease.) We apply the compression in quaternions that is based on
the need to secure these sent medical images (Chanak and QMSHKP
nmoptimezd by adopting the same steps presented in the previous
Banerjee 2020; Trujillo-Toledo et al. 2021). For this purpose, we
section. It should be noted that compression via quaternionic mo-
propose a new stego image encryption scheme in IoMTs that con-
ments allows:
tains three security keys (see Fig. 3). In this scheme, a carrier media
(cover image) is chosen to hide the message, which is in the form
i. Avoid the loss of correlation between layers of an RGB
of a large color medical image (the secret image). Applying the
system.
steganography scheme to these two images gives us a stego-
ii. Avoid geometric attacks such as rotation, translation, and
encrypted image (Karar et al. 2022; Kumar et al. n.d.).
scaling.
The optimized QM SHKP
nmoptimezd , DWT, QR moments, and 2D- FrSHM iii. Quantization used in the compression phase can avoid com-
map are used in this section to introduce the proposed new stego pression attacks.
image encryption scheme for IoMTs. Fig. 3 shows the overall struc- iv. Obtain a high compression ratio (CR).
ture of the proposed scheme, and additional details are presented v. Minimize the storage cost during a transformation via
below. IoMTs.
n
The cover image IH ðx; yÞ and the secret image IW ðx; yÞ are the in- vi. Use the 12 parameters of QMSHKP Popt opt opt opt
nmoptimezd : 1 ; a1 ; b1 ; P 2 ;
puts of the proposed process scheme. The output is represented by
opt 0 0 opt 0 0 0 opt0
an encrypted stego image EIStego ðx; yÞ knowing that the sizes of aopt opt opt opt opt
2 ; b2 ; P 1 ; a1 ; b1 ; P 2 ; a2 ; b2 g to extend the key
IH ðx; yÞ, IW ðx; yÞ, and EIStego ðx; yÞ are M  M, N  N and M  M re- space of the proposed steganography scheme; the value of
spectively. Note that this steganography scheme can accommodate the 12 parameters is considered KEY1.
secret images of multiple sizes. The steganography scheme process
is specified in the following steps: The results of this step are the two LLk matrices and a com-
Step 1: Decompose the image into three RGB planes and insert pressed image file IWC .
the hidden message (image Alzheimer’s disease) in the blue plane Step 3: Decompose the two matrices LLK and IWC using QR de-
of the IH ðx; yÞ image. composition into two matrices ðQ H and RH Þ and ðQ wc and Rwc Þ as

6
M.A. Tahiri, A. Bencherqui, H. Karmouni et al. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 35 (2023) 101604

Fig. 3. Flowchart of the proposed stego image encryption scheme for the IoMTs.

shown in Eqs. (15) and (16). Note that the size of the LLK compo- obtain the matrix EIStego . This technique is called in cryptography,
h i
nent after k-DWT is M
; 2kþ1
M
. the diffusion process. For this purpose, two chaotic sequences are
2kþ1
used in Eq. (19).
Q H  RH ¼ QRðLLk Þ ð15Þ 8  P
>
> X 
¼ floor x ð0Þ þ C1ðtÞ ni¼1 A1  ð1  u4  jcosðiÞjÞ
>
>
>
>
Q WC  RWC ¼ QRðIWC Þ ð16Þ < eð lnðCðniþtÞÞlnðCðniþ1ÞÞÞ
 ð19Þ
The two upper triangular matrices RH and RWC are the result of > Y  ¼ floor y ð0Þ þ 1 Pn A  ð1  u  jcosðiÞjÞ
>
>
> CðtÞ i¼1 2 5
this step. >
>
: ð lnðCðniþtÞÞlnðCðniþ1ÞÞÞ
Step 4: Calculate an embedded singular value RHWC by adding e
RWC and RH with a scaling factor h.
with A1 ¼ yði  1Þ þ 1  a:x2 ði  1Þ  xði  1Þ and A2 ¼
RHWC ¼ RH þ h  RWC ð17Þ b:xði  1Þ  yði  1Þ, where the values of the ½a; b; x ð0Þ; y ð0Þ;


To reconstruct the stego IStego ðx; yÞ image of size M  M, we fol- u3 ; u4 ; t parameters are used as the third security key (KEY3).
low the other steps shown in Fig. 4. The XOR operation in the sense of bits is applied to all the elements
Step 5: Encrypt IStego ðx; yÞ using the 2D-FrSHM map. This step is X  ¼ ½x ð1Þ : x ðM  M Þ and Y ¼ ½yð1Þ : yðM  MÞ to obtain the
based on two fundamental notions. sequence C. Then we remodel the sequence C into a 2D matrix
The first concept consists of interchanging the positions of the denoted K ¼ fKðx; yÞgx;y¼M;M
x;y¼1 . This matrix is designed to be the key
 x;y¼M;M
values of IStego ðx; yÞ to obtain the matrix IStego1 , which represents image of the matrix IStego2 ¼ IStego2 ðx; yÞ x;y¼1 . Finally, the XOR
the scrambled IStego ðx; yÞ, which is called, in cryptography, the con- operation is used to obtain an encrypted matrix
fusion process. For this purpose, two chaotic sequences are used.  x;y¼M;M
EIStego ¼ EIStego x; yÞ x;y¼1 as follows:
8 P
>
> xðnÞ ¼ x0 þ C1ðtÞ ni¼1 A1  ð1  u1  jsinðiÞjÞ
>
>  x;y¼M;M
< eð lnðCðniþtÞÞlnðCðniþ1ÞÞÞ with x0 2 ½0; 1 EIStego ¼ IStego2 ðx; yÞ x;y¼1  fKðx; yÞgx;y¼M;M
x;y¼1 ð20Þ
P ð18Þ
> yðnÞ ¼ y0 þ C1ðtÞ ni¼1 A2  ð1  u2  jsinðiÞjÞ
>
>
> To extract the secret image IW ¼ fIW x; yÞgx;y¼M;M from the en-
: 
x;y¼1
x;y¼M;M
eð lnðCðniþtÞÞlnðCðniþ1ÞÞÞ with y0 2 ½0; 1 crypted stego image EIStego ¼ EIStego ðx; yÞ x;y¼1 , we follow the
with A1 ¼ yði  1Þ þ 1  a:x2 ði  1Þ  xði  1Þ and steps mentioned below:
 x;y¼M;M
A2 ¼ b:xði  1Þ  yði  1Þ, where the values of the Step 1: Decrypt the EIStego ¼ EIStego ðx; yÞ x;y¼1 matrix using
½a; b; xð0Þ; yð0Þ; u1 ; u2 ; t parameters are used as a second security 2D-FrSHM to obtain the IStego image.
key (KEY2).X ¼ ½xð1Þ : xðM  MÞ and Y ¼ ½yð1Þ : yðM  MÞ are gen- Step 2: Decompose the matrix IStego into four equal sub-matrixes
erated by Eq. (18) are sorted in ascending order to store them in LLStego ; LHStego ; HLStego and HHStego , where k ¼ log2 M is based on the
N
variables named X* and Y* with X ¼ ½x  ð1Þ : x  ðN  MÞ and K-DWT multiple transformation.
Y ¼ ½y  ð1Þ : y  ðN  MÞ. In addition, indices must be assigned to Step 3: Use the QR decomposition to decompose LLStego into two
the variables Lx(i) and Ly(j). matrices, Q Stego and RStego .
Transform the image IStego into a vector. Then, permute the ele-
Step 4: Calculate the extracted singular value RWC by Eq. (21),
ments of the latter according to Lx(i) to obtain the sequence IStego1
 where h is the scaling factor
with IStego1 ¼ IStego1 ð1Þ : IStego1 ðM  MÞ . Finally, reshape the
 x;y¼M;M
vector IStego1 ¼ IStego1 ðx; yÞ x;y¼1 into a 2D matrix to generate RHWC  Rstego
RWC ¼ ð21Þ
the matrix IStego1 , which is the scrambled IStego . We then performed h
this phase for the matrix IStego1 using Ly(j) to generate IStego2 Step 5: Apply the inverse of the QR transformation to the RWC
 x;y¼M;M
scrambled IStego2 ¼ IStego2 ðx; yÞ x;y¼1 . matrix to obtain the IWC matrix.
Step 6: Finally, generated by de-qualifying the compressed file
The second notion allows both to increase the global level of
protection offered by the proposed scheme and to protect against IWC . Then, we apply the inverse transformation of IQMSHKP
nmoptimized given

statistical attacks. The values of my matrix IStego2 are modified to by Eq. (6) in order to generate the dissimilar message IW ðx; yÞ.
7
M.A. Tahiri, A. Bencherqui, H. Karmouni et al. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 35 (2023) 101604

 x;y¼M;M cryptography and image masking processes. We solve this problem

The encrypted stego image ( EIStego ðx; yÞ x;y¼1 ) contains secret
in the following section by implementing the proposed scheme on
information about the patient, such as clinical information, name,
a Raspberry Pi 4 board.
and medical record. These images will be stored at the hospital
with a 32-bit binary number that will not be included in the image
 x;y¼M;M
information. We should mention that the EIStego ðx; yÞ x;y¼1 image 4. Simulations and results
is kept in a database, so that the doctor, pharmacist, or other hos-
pital can access the medical images of a specific patient in the data- In this section, we analyse the performance of the proposed
base. The patient’s binary number is inserted in the first row of steganography security scheme. For this purpose, several experi-
 x;y¼M;M ments and performance analysis tests are performed.
images ( EIStego ðx; yÞ x;y¼1 ) without affecting the information in
the first row. This patient’s binary number is used to find the
patient-specific images among the many images in the database. 4.1. The effectiveness of the proposed compression technique
The information itself is encrypted and not accessible, so no one
can decrypt it unless you have the three keys used in the proposed In this subsection, we evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed
security scheme, which will be sent by a short message service compression technique in terms of CR, PSNR (Hmimid, Sayyouri,
(SMS). We should mention that the proposed method has a signif- and Qjidaa 2015), and SSIM (Wang, Zhang, and Zhao 2022) at dif-
icant computational time limitation because of the use of hidden ferent orders in QMSHKP
nmoptimezd . For this purpose, we use a set of large

Fig. 4. An overview of the proposed process (steganographic scheme) for masking a medical image.

8
M.A. Tahiri, A. Bencherqui, H. Karmouni et al. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 35 (2023) 101604

Fig. 5. Set of images reconstructed after compression by the proposed method.

medical images selected from the database that exists at health.uc- that is, if the user wants to obtain a good quality of the decom-
davis.edu. Each pixel of these images is encoded with 24 bits. For pressed image, it is necessary to increase the value of the order
the compressed image file, each value is encoded with 24 bits (uin- of QMSHKP
nmoptimezd and vice versa.
t24). The results obtained in this test are shown in Fig. 5.
This figure shows that the visual information of the decom- 4.2. Sensitivity and key space analyses
pressed (reconstructed) image is clear even if the CR value is very
high. It can also be noticed that the MSE values decrease propor- The security key (KEY) given below is composed of the elements
tionally to the increase of QM SHKP
nmoptimezd , which means that the quality KEY1, KEY2, and KEY3:
of the reconstructed image improves. Therefore, the proposed
KEY ¼ fKEY 1 ; KEY 2 ; KEY 3 g
compression method can be used according to the user’s needs,

9
M.A. Tahiri, A. Bencherqui, H. Karmouni et al. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 35 (2023) 101604

8 0 0 0 0
9
0 0
< P1 ; a1 ; b1 ; P2 ; a2 ; b2 ; P1 ; a1 ; b1 ; P2 ; a2 ; b2 >
> = QMSHKP
nmoptimezd used in this test is (256, 256). We present the results
KEY ¼ a; b; xð0Þ; yð0Þ; u1 ; u2 ; t of this test in Fig. 6. From this figure, we can extract three main
>
: >
;
a; b; x  ð0Þ; y  ð0Þ; u3 ; u4 ; t results:

This key is composed of 26 real values. It is worth mentioning

i) When the security key is correctly used, the image is suc-
that all key elements are independent. If we ignore integer values
cessfully decrypted with high reconstruction quality. ii) A
in the calculation of the KEY space size and consider the machine
  slight modification in a single value of the QMSHKP
nmoptimezd param-
order of precision to be 1015 for double precision real type val- 0 0
eters P1 ; a1 ; b1 ; P 2 ; a2 ; b2 ; P 01 ; a01 ; b1 ; P02 ; a02 ; b2 changes
ues, then the KEY space size becomes approximately equal to the visual information of the decrypted image. iii) Any slight
 26
1015 ¼ 10390 . This area size is more than the minimum sug- change in the parameters of the proposed chaotic 2D-FrSHM
system leads to the total loss of the visual information of the
gested limit for providing adequate protection against a brute force
decrypted image.
assault, which is 2100 (Ernawan and Kabir 2019; Khennaoui et al.
2020; Volkhonskiy et al. 2020).
4.3. Correlation analysis
We examine the sensitivity of the security key (KEY) by per-
forming modifications on the 26 values of the KEY elements, and
The coherence between adjacent pixels in an image that has not
then note the influence of the modification performed on the de-
been transformed or modified is very strong, because the intensity
crypted image. To perform this test, we use a real medical image
of their pixels is almost equal. However, an effective encryption al-
of size 1000  1000  3, applying the steganography scheme pro-
gorithm must minimize the correlation between these pixels to
cess presented in the previous section (Fig. 4), where the order of
make the original image unpredictable for attackers. It should be

Fig. 6. The effect of change on certain key values.

10
M.A. Tahiri, A. Bencherqui, H. Karmouni et al. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 35 (2023) 101604

noted that an image that undergoes conversion or processing, such ing filter, as well as adding Gaussian noise, speckle noise, and
as encoding, must have a correlation value between neighboring performing rotation. Then, we tried to decrypt the stego image to
pixels close to 0 (Hu et al. 2020; Kaur and Kumar 2020): highlight the effect of these attacks. Fig. 9 shows the results of this
test, along with the PSNR values (Daoui et al. 2021a; Jahid et al.
covðA; BÞ
rðA; BÞ ¼ 2 ½1 ; þ1 ð22Þ 2018; Ogri et al. 2019). It should be noted that all decrypted images
rðAÞrðBÞ can still reveal the information presented in the cover images, even
after applying various statistical attacks.
rðA; BÞ ¼ 1 or þ 1 ; indicate a high correlation In the next subsection, we tested the effectiveness of the pro-
When
rðA; BÞ ¼ 0 ; indicate an absence of correlation posed method to recover the secret IW ðx; yÞ image even if the en-
 x;y¼M;M
ð23Þ crypted Stego EIStego ðx; yÞ x;y¼1 image was attacked by
To highlight the effectiveness of our security scheme in terms of steganalysis attacks.
the correlation between pixels, we applied the Steganography
scheme process presented in the previous section (Fig. 4) on a real 4.5. Robustness analysis on the secret image
medical image of size 1000  1000  3. The results presented in
Table 3 show that all the values of correlation coefficients H, V Robustness refers to the ability of a steganographic system to
and D are very close to 0 in which proves that there is a weak cor- cope with and avoid any change without the need to adjust its ba-
relation, so there is no similarity. sic configuration. Moreover, it has the ability to extract secret im-
In the next subsection, we tested the effectiveness of the pro- ages while being subjected to various steganalysis attacks. We
posed method to recover the cover image fIH ðx; yÞgx;y¼M;M
x;y¼1 even if perform the scenario shown in Fig. 10 to ensure that the proposed
 x;y¼M;M
the encrypted Stego image EIStego ðx; yÞ x;y¼1 was attacked by method is robust.
common image processing attacks, namely noise and cropping. First, we insert a secret image (Image. 1) of size
1000  1000  3 into another cover image of size
1000  1000  3 (Image. 2) by applying the two processes (image
4.4. Noise robustness analysis and cropping on the cover image
hiding and encryption) described in Fig. 4 to design an encrypted
 x;y¼M;M
To measure the resistance of the proposed security scheme stego image EIStego ðx; yÞ x;y¼1 . The images EIStego ðx; yÞ are then
against cropping attacks, we cut portions of the encrypted contaminated using a variety of attacks (see Table 4) to produce
 x;y¼M;M a noisy encrypted stego image EIStego ðx; yÞ. Finally, we use the steps
EIStego ðx; yÞ x;y¼1 stego images of sizes 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, and 1/2
from the previous section on EIStego ðx; yÞ to extract the secret image
and then apply the inverse of the two processes, namely encryp-
tion and data hiding (De Oliveira Neto et al., 2020; Tuli, Soneji, IW ðx; yÞ.
and Churi 2022), presented in the previous section (Fig. 4), with Standard performance measures, such as MSE (Eq.24), NC
the aim of obtaining the IH ðx; yÞ cover image. The results of the data (Eq.25) and SSIM(Eq.26) (Belazi et al., 2016; Chai, Chen, and
loss attack are shown in Fig. 7. The figure shows that the content of Broyde 2017; Singh 2018) are adopted to perform the test summa-
cover image IH ðx; yÞ is not lost and can be recovered, which proves rized in Fig. 10.
the ability of the proposed security scheme to resist data loss M 
1 XM X 
attacks. MSEðIstego ; Istego Þ ¼ 2
Istegoi;j  Istegoi;j 2 ð24Þ
To measure the resistance of the proposed security scheme M i¼1 j¼1
against noise attacks, ‘‘Salt & Pepper” (Zhang et al. 2019) with var-
ious noise densities is applied to the encrypted stego image
 x;y¼M;M lIstego lIstego þ d1 rIstego Istego þ d2
EIStego ðx; yÞ x;y¼1 ; the resulting decrypted images are also shown SSIMðIstego ; Istego Þ ¼ : ð25Þ
l2Istego þ l2Istego þ d1 r2Istego þ r2Istego þ d2
in Fig. 8. We must note that all decrypted images can still bring out
the information presented in the original images (secret messages)
even when noise levels are high, which demonstrates that the
PN PN 
i¼1 j¼1 IW i;j I W i;j
technique can withstand noise attacks. NC IW ðx; yÞ; IW ðx; yÞ ¼ sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffisffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ð26Þ
We performed several forms of attacks in an effort to extend the PN P N
2 PN P N
2
Iwi;j Iwi;j
strength testing of the cover images. Thus, we followed a scenario i¼1 j¼1 i¼1 j¼1
of first attacking the encrypted steganography image using differ-
ent filters, such as the Wiener filter, the Gaussian filter, the averag- where

Table 3
Comparison of the correlation coefficients.

Algorithm Canal Horizontal (H) Vertical (V) Diagonal (D)

(Li et al. 2020) Red 0.0278 0.0279 0.0245
Green 0.0023 0.0176 0.0034
blue 0.0206 0.0092 0.0127
(Rajendran and Doraipandian 2017) Red 0.0659 0.0408 0.0242
Green 0.0250 0.0506 0.0463
Blue 0.0546 0.0539 0.0505
The encrypted image via 2D-FlSHM
(Trujillo-Toledo et al. 2021) Red 0.0067 0.0031 0.0062
Green 0.0024 0.0032 0.0093
Blue 0.0056 0.0017 0.0045
2D-FrSHM Red 0.0011 0.0024 0.0019
Green 0.0026 0.0034 0.0023
Blue 0.0021 0.0036 0.0020
The image decrypted via 2D-FlSHM

11
M.A. Tahiri, A. Bencherqui, H. Karmouni et al.
Fig. 7. Encrypted image attacked by different occlusion values so that PSNR, SSIM and MSE.

lIstego and lIstego are the average of the stego image Istego and the
stego image after decryption Istego .

r2Istego and r2Istego are the variances of Istego and Istego , respectively.

rIstego Istego is the covariance of Istego and Istego .

d1 and d2 are two variables that are used to stabilize the division
with a low denominator.
The secret image extracted from the encrypted stego images
after applying various noises and their NC values is presented in
Fig. 11. After performing the three filtering attacks on the encrypt-
ed stego image and extracting the secret image, the average NC
value is 0.9991. For the three noise attacks, the average value of
12
Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 35 (2023) 101604
NC is 0.9951. For scaling attacks, the value of NC is 0.9960. In sum-
mary, almost all the images recovered after applying the attacks
have a high level of visual clarity. Even though some of the recov-
ered images are blurred, the essential information included can
still be recognized.
Subsequently, we performed and verified the test on the dy-
namic parameters by varying the value of QF from 10 to 90 for JPEG
compression and the value of CR from 0 to 36 for JPEG 2000 com-
 x;y¼M;M
pression applied to the encrypted stego image EIStego ðx; yÞ x;y¼1
(Fig. 12). From the figure, we observe that with the increase in
QF and the decrease in CR, the robustness increases significantly.
In summary, this test shows the capability and robustness of the
M.A. Tahiri, A. Bencherqui, H. Karmouni et al. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 35 (2023) 101604

Fig. 8. Encrypted image attacked by ‘‘Salt & pepper” Noise.

Fig. 9. The cover image after applying various noises and their PSNR values.

proposed method, which is based on the compression of the secret
image by the Hahn-Krawtchouk hybrid quaternion square mo-
ments (HK-HQSM) which are optimized by a new hybrid meta-
heuristic algorithm based on the ‘‘Salp Swarm Algorithm” and
the ‘‘Arithmetic Optimization Algorithm”.
4.6. Comparison with similar work
In order to validate and authenticate the results found by our
method. In this subsection, the proposed new EIStego ðx; yÞ stego im-
age encryption scheme based on compression of the IW ðx; yÞ secret

13
M.A. Tahiri, A. Bencherqui, H. Karmouni et al.
Fig. 10. Process to test the ability of system steganography to propose.
Table 4
Parameters of the used attacks.
Attack Specification Parameters
Filter attack Wiener filter Window size 3  3
median filter
Gaussian filter
Noise attack Gaussian noise V = 0.001
salt and pepper noise 0.001
Rescaling attack Resciling1 0.25
Rescaling 2 4
Rotation attack Angle Degree = 2
Motion blur attack theta = 4 len = 7
image via HK-HQSM, on DWT and in QR decomposition of the
IH ðx; yÞ cover image and on a new 2D- FrSHM chaotic map, is com-
pared with several other related methods on several key features.
In this context, various properties are considered; these properties
include the type and size of input images (cover image and the se-
cret image), the working domain, and security. As shown in Table 5,
it is evident that the proposed method is very efficient compared to
the others based on the values of NC, SSIM, and PSNR. These results
can be explained by the fact that HK-HQSM has a high performance
in image representation with very low information redundancy.
Moreover, the proposed scheme uses the H-SSAOA algorithm to
optimize and stabilize the HK-HQSM, which guarantees better re-
sults. The advantage of our security system lies in its ability to
combine the benefits of steganography and encryption to provide
an even higher level of security. By first hiding sensitive data in a
seemingly innocuous medium through steganography and then
encrypting it, encrypted steganography provides a double layer
of security, making it more difficult for attackers to discover or in-
tercept sensitive data. We must mention that the proposed method
has some limitations, especially in terms of computation time,
which is due to the use of secret image hiding and encryption pro-
cesses. This problem is solved in the next section by implementing
the proposed scheme on a Raspberry Pi 4 board.
4.7. Experimental results
After presenting the effectiveness of our security scheme for
steganography and robustness against different attacks, we will
have to mention that this effectiveness derives from the use of a
set of transformations and decompositions in the process of inte-
14
Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 35 (2023) 101604
gration of the hidden image, including the transformation in the
moment domain (Daoui et al., 2021b), DWT, and QR. The proposed
steganography security scheme leads to a significant increase in
the required computational time because of sequential program-
ming. Applying DWT transformations and QR decomposition to
the large 1000  1000 cover image IH ðx; yÞ to obtain RH , this step
takes 203.657 s (phase-1). While the quaternion compression,
which is based on QMSHKP
nmoptimezd and QR decomposition, applies to
the large size 1000  1000 kosher IW ðx; yÞ image to get Rwc , we then
apply the RHWC ¼ RH þ h:RWC equation in order to get a singular em-
bedded value RHWC . This step lasts 623.856 s (phase-2). Finally, to
 x;y¼M;M
reconstruct the encrypted stego image EIStego ðx; yÞ x;y¼1 of size
1000  1000 we apply the inverse of the transformations previous-
ly motioned in Fig. 4 and encryption using the 2D-FrSHM map, this
step lasts 513.566 s (phase-3).
Fig. 13 shows the sequential execution time of the integration
processes of a medical image of size 1000  1000 into another
medical image of size 1000  1000 via the proposed steganograph-
ic security scheme.
Table 6 shows the elapsed execution time of the proposed filter-
ing system implemented on the Raspberry Pi (Lee et al. 2022) using
the sequential approach.
Steganography systems that are implemented in the transfor-
mation domain are more reliable than systems in the time domain.
Nevertheless, the most important disadvantage of steganography
systems that operate in the transformation domain is that they
are time-consuming, especially when applied to large images. We
should note that the most time-consuming steps in the computa-
tion of the proposed security scheme are:

Image compression using quaternionic moments QMSHKP
nmoptimezd

the application of the DWT transformation and QR
decomposition.

The reconstruction of images by using the inverse of QMSHKP
nmoptimezd

The use of the hybrid H-SSAOA algorithm to optimize the pa-
rameters of QMSHKP
nmoptimezd
Motivated by the resolution of this problem caused by the se-
quential programming of the three phases, we integrated a specific
number of Raspberry Pi 4 in a cluster to realize a parallel process-
ing using OpenMP and the message passing interface. This choice is
justified by the fact that the Raspberry Pi is characterized by its
M.A. Tahiri, A. Bencherqui, H. Karmouni et al. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 35 (2023) 101604

Fig. 11. Secret image extracts from encrypted stego images after applying various noises along with their NC values.

Fig. 12. The secret image extracts encrypted stego images after applying compression noise and their NC values.

15
M.A. Tahiri, A. Bencherqui, H. Karmouni et al. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 35 (2023) 101604

Table 5
Comparative analysis of NC, PSNR and SSIM values of proposed method with other known methods in the literature.

Ref (Nguyen et al. 2016) (Rajendran (Benhfid et al. 2020) (Li et al. 2020) Proposed
and
Doraipandian
2017)
Method multi bit-plane block Least Interpolation by bivariate Adversarial generative network Hahn-Krawchouk hybrid square
data-hiding Significant Bit box-splines on the three moment compression
directions
Limitation Not robust against Reduced Limited payload and The integration of the secret The process of concealment and
compression, cropping payload safety assessment by image takes more time and deciphering takes a lot of time
and key dependency Steganalysis are missing. requires much more memory.
Dimension of 512  512 256  256 512  512 512  512 1000  1000
cover and et et Et Et Et
secret image 256  256 128  128 512  512 512  512 1000  1000

Steganography Spatial domain (SD) SD SD SD The covert image has a spatial

Domaine domain, while the secret image
has a moment domain.
Security AES Keystream Logistic map — — Proposed 2D- FrSHM
Generator
Test dataset general grayscale general general grayscale images General color and grayscale Medical image in color
images grayscale images
images
NC – – 0.99696 – 0.9998
PSNR 46 44.5 46 42.3 54.8
SSIM 0.9952 – – 0.987 0.9994

and a 256 MB external disk mounted via a USB3 to SATA connector.

Fig. 13. Sequential execution time of integration processes in the proposed
steganographic security scheme.
easy portability, low power consumption, and low cost. In addition,
the Raspberry Pi facilitates the interconnection between the Inter-
net and objects, which allows us to take a step forward to create
and realize a system of IoMTs. The specifications of the Raspberry
Pi-4 used are presented in Fig. 14.
The objective of this section is to use a Raspberry Pi 4 cluster as
the main controller of a portable system of our proposed digital
While the main node will normally boot from an SD card, it is this
Raspberry card (main node) that would be connected to a keyboard
and monitor to allow direct interaction with the cluster. The other
3 compute nodes will be configured and connected with the main
node via an Ethernet LAN link.
After installing the operating system, which is stored on the ex-
ternal drive, all hardware components are connected and powered
up. The system boots and runs on the basis of the operating system
installed on the four Raspberry Pi 4 computers. All phases, includ-
ing phase-1, phase-2 and phase-3, are parallelized using the Mes-
sage Passing Interface (MPI), which ensures communications
between the compute nodes. Note that each of these nodes has a
complete copy of the proposed digital steganography system pro-
gram but executes only a specific part of it. In practice, phase 1
is executed by compute node-1, phase 2 is executed by computing
node-2, and the results generated by both nodes are processed by
computing node-3. We determine the speed and runtime improve-
ment ratio to evaluate the effectiveness of implementing the sug-
gested water filtering scheme in the Raspberry Pi cluster.
Speedup is the efficiency statistic that is used to determine the
speed of parallel execution compared to serial execution (Eq. (27)).
M  
1 XM X

steganography system. The cabling topology of the cluster contains MSEðIstego ; Istego Þ ¼ 2
Istegoi;j  Istegoi;j 2 ð27Þ
M i¼1 j¼1
4 nodes connected to a single managed switch (Fig. 15). One of the
nodes will be the so-called ‘‘master node”: this node will have a The execution time improvement ratio (ETIR) defined by Eq.
second Gigabit Ethernet connection to the LAN/WAN via a USB3, (28).

Table 6
The sequential execution time of the proposed security scheme implemented on a single Raspberry Pi-4.

Cover image Secret image Execution time (in seconds)

Insertion process Extraction process

1024  1024 1024  1024 1241.079 992.457

512  512 512  512 791.079 573.825
256  256 256  256 435.373 344.493

16
M.A. Tahiri, A. Bencherqui, H. Karmouni et al. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 35 (2023) 101604

Fig. 14. Raspberry Pi-4 (Hajder and Rauch 2021).

Fig. 15. The cabling topology of the proposed cluster.

When ETIR = 0 the execution times (parallel and sequential) are
identical, there is no improvement.

ETIR = 100% the execution times (parallel and sequential) were
different, there is a remarkable improvement
 
Timeparallel
ETIR ¼ 1  100
TimeSequential
To perform the current analysis, we chose three medical images
to represent the cover images with a size of 1000  1000, and we
also chose three other images to represent the hidden images: the
first one represents a segmented tumor with a size of
1000  1000  3, the second one represents liver biopsy
1000  1000  3, and the third one represents an image of the
anatomy of the right eye cut in two with a size of
1000  1000  3. The Speedup and ETIR of the secret image inser-
tion process are presented in Table 7. From this table, we can ob-
ð28Þ
serve that the time consumed by parallel scheduling is less than
the time consumed by sequential scheduling. These results encour-
aged us to recommend this method for real-time telemedicine
applications.

17
M.A. Tahiri, A. Bencherqui, H. Karmouni et al.
Table 7
Comparison of the time required to execute the proposed scheme using sequential and parallel methods.
Cover image Secret image 1000  1000  3
1000  1000  3
5. Conclusion
In this paper, we propose a new stego image encryption scheme
based on a new compression method for the secret image and the
DWT and QR of the cover image. The secret image is compressed by
HK-HQSM, which is optimized by a new hybrid meta-heuristic al-
gorithm, H-SSAOA. Based on the numerical experiments conduct-
ed, we can conclude that the proposed steganography scheme is
highly effective and secure. The obtained results indicate that the
proposed method achieved a high level of imperceptibility with
NC = 0.9998, which means that the stego image is almost identical
to the cover image. Moreover, the scheme offers a high level of ro-
bustness with PSNR = 54.8 and SSIM = 0.9994. In addition, the pro-
posed scheme offers a high-security level due to the use of a new
2D-FrSHM chaotic map based on the 2D fractional Henon map to
encrypt the stego image. Moreover, the implementation of the
scheme on a low-cost Raspberry Pi 4 hardware board proved its
practicality. Further improvement to the system is underway to
enable the processing of 3D medical images using FPGA tiles. These
improvements will enhance the applicability of the proposed
scheme in IoMT applications, offering better security and privacy
protection for medical data transmission over public networks.
Funding
This project is funded by King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
Researchers Supporting Project number (RSP2023R167), King
Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
References
Abikoye, O.C., Ojo, U.A., Awotunde, J.B., Ogundokun, R.O., 2020. A safe and secured
iris template using steganography and cryptography. Multimed. Tools Appl. 79
(31–32), 23483–23506. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-08971-x.
Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 35 (2023) 101604
Sequential programming Parallel programming Speedup ETIR
948.503 102.584 9.2461 89.18%
983.167 184.483 5.3293 81.235%
1047.853 256.376 2.9403 75.533%
Abualigah, L., Diabat, A., Mirjalili, S., Elaziz, M.A., Gandomi, A.H., 2021. The
arithmetic optimization algorithm. Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Eng. 376.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cma.2020.113609.
Al-Afandy, K.A., Faragallah, O.S., ELmhalawy, A., El-Rabaie, E.S.M., El-Banby, G.M.,
2016. High security data hiding using image cropping and LSB least significant
bit steganography. Colloquium Information Sci. Technol. CIST, 400–404. https://
doi.org/10.1109/CIST.2016.7805079.
AlGhamdi, R., Alassafi, M.O., Alshdadi, A.A., Dessouky, M.M., Ramdan, R.A.,
Aboshosha, B.W., 2023. Developing trusted IoT healthcare information-based
AI and blockchain. Processes, 1–27.
Alhomoud, A.M., 2021. Image steganography in spatial domain: current status,
techniques, and trends. Intell. Automat. Soft Comput. 27 (1), 69–88. https://doi.
org/10.32604/iasc.2021.014773.
Amakdouf, H., Zouhri, A., El Mallahi, M., Tahiri, A., Chenouni, D., Qjidaa, H., 2021.
Artificial intelligent classification of biomedical color image using quaternion
discrete radial Tchebichef moments. Multimed. Tools Appl. 80 (2), 3173–3192.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-09781-x.
Amine, M., Hicham, T., Qjidaa, H., Hosny, K.M., Bencherqui, A., Daoui, A., Sayyouri,
M., 2022. New color image encryption using hybrid optimization algorithm and
Krawtchouk fractional transformations. Vis. Comput. https://doi.org/10.1007/
s00371-022-02736-3.
Arya, A., Soni, S., 2018. Performance evaluation of secrete image steganography
techniques using least significant bit (LSB) method. Int. J. Computer Sci. Trends
Technol. (IJCST) 6 (2), 160–215.
Belazi, A., Abd, A.A., El-Latif, Belghith, S., 2016. A novel image encryption scheme
based on substitution-permutation network and chaos. Signal Process. 128,
155–170. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sigpro.2016.03.021.
Benhfid, A., Ameur, E.B., Taouil, Y., 2020. Reversible steganographic method based
on interpolation by bivariate linear box-spline on the three directional mesh. J.
King Saud Univ. - Computer Information Sci. 32 (7), 850–889. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.jksuci.2018.09.016.
Chai, X., Chen, Y., Broyde, L., 2017. A novel chaos-based image encryption algorithm
using DNA sequence operations. Opt. Lasers Eng. 88, 197–213. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.optlaseng.2016.08.009.
Chai, X., Xianglong, F.u., Gan, Z., Yang, L.u., Chen, Y., 2019. A color image
cryptosystem based on dynamic DNA encryption and chaos. Signal Process.
155, 44–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sigpro.2018.09.029.
Chanak, P., Banerjee, I., 2020. Congestion free routing mechanism for IoT-enabled
wireless sensor networks for smart healthcare applications. IEEE Trans.
Consum. Electron. 66 (3), 223–232. https://doi.org/10.1109/TCE.2020.2987433.
Chen, K., Zhou, H., Zhao, H., Chen, D., Zhang, W., Nenghai, Y.u., 2022. Distribution-
Preserving steganography based on text-to-speech generative models. IEEE
Trans. Dependable Secure Comput. 19 (5), 3343–3356. https://doi.org/10.1109/
TDSC.2021.3095072.
Cheng, R., Kehe, W.u., Yuling, S.u., Li, W., Cui, W., Tong, J., 2021. An eficient ECC-
based Cp-ABE scheme for power IOT. Processes 9 (7), 1–16. https://doi.org/
10.3390/pr9071176.
Daoui, A., Yamni, M., El Ogri, O., Karmouni, H., Sayyouri, M., Qjidaa, H., 2020. New
algorithm for large-sized 2D and 3D image reconstruction using higher-order
hahn moments. Circuits Syst. Signal Process. 39 (9), 4552–4577. https://doi.org/
10.1007/s00034-020-01384-z.
Daoui, A., Karmouni, H., Sayyouri, M., Qjidaa, H., Maaroufi, M., Alami, B., 2021a. New
robust method for image copyright protection using histogram features and
sine cosine algorithm. Expert Syst. Appl. 177, (November 2020). https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.eswa.2021.114978 114978.
Daoui, A., Karmouni, H., Sayyouri, M., Qjidaa, H., 2021b. Efficient methods for signal
processing using Charlier moments and artificial bee colony algorithm. Circuits
Systems Signal Process. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00034-021-01764-z.
18
M.A. Tahiri, A. Bencherqui, H. Karmouni et al.
Duan, X., Song, H., Qin, C., Khan, M.K., 2018. Coverless steganography for digital
images based on a generative model. Comput. Mater. Continua 55 (3), 483–493.
https://doi.org/10.3970/cmc.2018.01798.
Duan, X., Jia, K., Li, B., Guo, D., Zhang, E., Qin, C., 2019. Reversible image
steganography scheme based on a U-Net structure. IEEE Access 7, 9314–9323.
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2891247.
Ernawan, F., Kabir, M.N., 2019. An improved watermarking technique for copyright
protection based on Tchebichef moments. IEEE Access 7, 151985–1151983.
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2948086.
Hajder, P., Rauch, Ł., 2021. Moving multiscale modelling to the edge: benchmarking
and load optimization for cellular automata on low power microcomputers.
Processes 9 (12). https://doi.org/10.3390/pr9122225.
Hmimid, A., Sayyouri, M., Qjidaa, H., 2015. Fast computation of separable two-
dimensional discrete invariant moments for image classification. Pattern
Recogn. 48 (2), 509–521. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patcog.2014.08.020.
Hu, X., Wei, L., Chen, W., Chen, Q., Guo, Y., 2020. Color image encryption algorithm
based on dynamic chaos and matrix convolution. IEEE Access 8, 12452–12466.
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2965740.
Ibrahim, A., Mohammed, S., Ali, H.A., Hussein, S.E., 2020. Breast cancer
segmentation from thermal images based on chaotic Salp Swarm algorithm.
IEEE Access 8, 122121–122134. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3007336.
Idan, Z.N., Abdulhussain, S.H., Al-Haddad, S.A.R., 2020. A New Separable Moments
Based on Tchebichef-Krawtchouk polynomials. IEEE Access 8, 41013–41025.
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2977305.
Jahid, T., Karmouni, H., Hmimid, A., Sayyouri, M. and Qjidaa, H., 2018. Image
Moments and Reconstruction by Krawtchouk via Clenshaw’s Reccurence
Formula. In: Proceedings of 2017 International Conference on Electrical and
Information Technologies, ICEIT 2017 2018-January(1):1–7. https://doi.org/10.
1109/EITech.2017.8255265.
Karar, M.E., Alotaibi, B., Alotaibi, M., 2022. Intelligent medical IoT-enabled
automated microscopic image diagnosis of acute blood cancers. Sensors 22
(6), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.3390/s22062348.
Kaur, M., Kumar, V., 2020. A comprehensive review on image encryption
techniques. Arch. Comput. Meth. Eng. 27 (1), 15–43. https://doi.org/10.1007/
s11831-018-9298-8.
Khennaoui, A.A., Ouannas, A., Odibat, Z., Pham, V.T., Grassi, G., 2020. On the three-
dimensional fractional-order Hénon Map with Lorenz-Like attractors. Int. J.
Bifurcation Chaos 30 (11), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1142/S021812742050217X.
Kumar, Pattnaik, P.K., Mohanty, S. and Mohanty, S. (Eds.). n.d. Intelligent Systems
Reference Library 178 Smart Healthcare Analytics in LoT Enabled Environment.
Lee, C.Y., Lee, S.J., Chen, C.H., Yang, L.J., Wang, X.W., Lin, J.T., Chao, P.Y., Chen, S.Y.,
2022. Application of monitoring module three-in-one microsensor to real-time
microscopic monitoring of polarizer sheet in roll-to-roll process. Processes 10
(5). https://doi.org/10.3390/pr10050900.
Li, Q., Wang, X., Wang, X., Ma, B., Wang, C., Xian, Y., Shi, Y., 2020. A novel grayscale
image steganography scheme based on chaos encryption and generative
adversarial networks. IEEE Access 8, 168166–168176. https://doi.org/10.1109/
ACCESS.2020.3021103.
Liao, J.C., Chen, S.H., Zhuang, Z.Y., Bo Wei, W.u., Chen, Y.J., 2021. Designing and
manufacturing of automatic robotic lawn mower. Processes 9 (2), 1–22. https://
doi.org/10.3390/pr9020358.
Loy, D.M., Krzysztoń, R., Lächelt, U., Rädler, J.O., Wagner, E., 2021. Controlling
nanoparticle formulation: a low-budget prototype for the automation of a
microfluidic platform. Processes 9 (1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.3390/
pr9010129.
Neto, D.O., Jose, R., Lima, J.B., Panario, D., 2020. The design of a novel multiple-
parameter fractional number-theoretic transform and its application to image
encryption. IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol. 30 (8), 2489–2502. https://
doi.org/10.1109/TCSVT.2019.2925522.
Nguyen, T.D., Arch-Int, S., Arch-Int, N., 2016. An adaptive multi bit-plane image
steganography using block data-hiding. Multimed. Tools Appl. 75 (14), 8319–
8345. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-015-2752-9.
19
Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 35 (2023) 101604
Ogri, O., El, A., Daoui, M., Yamni, H., Karmouni, M.S., Qjidaa, H., 2019. 2D and 3D
medical image analysis by discrete orthogonal moments. Procedia Comput. Sci.
148 (Icds 2018), 428–437. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2019.01.055.
Patel, N., Meena, S., 2017. LSB Based Image Steganography Using Dynamic Key
Cryptography. In: 2016 International Conference on Emerging Trends in
Communication Technologies, ETCT 2016. https://doi.org/10.1109/ETCT.2016.
7882955.
Van, T.P., Dinh, T.H., Thanh, T.M., 2019. Simultaneous Convolutional Neural Network
for Highly Efficient Image Steganography. In: Proceedings - 2019 19th
International Symposium on Communications and Information Technologies,
ISCIT 2019 410–15. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISCIT.2019.8905216.
Rabab, O., Tahiri, M.A., Bencherqui, A., Amakdouf, H., Jamil, M.O., Qjidaa, H., 2022.
Efficient Localization and Reconstruction Of 3D Objects using the New Hybrid
Squire Moment. In: 2022 International Conference on Intelligent Systems and
Computer Vision, ISCV 2022. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISCV54655.2022.9806086.
Rajendran, S., Doraipandian, M., 2017. Chaotic map based random image
steganography using LSB technique. Int. J. Netw. Security 19 (4), 593–658.
https://doi.org/10.6633/IJNS.201707.19(4).12.
Rathore, V., Pal, A.K., 2021. An image encryption scheme in bit plane content using
henon map based generated edge map. Multimed. Tools Appl. 80 (14), 22275–
22300. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-021-10719-0.
Shi, H., Dong, J., Wang, W., Qian, Y., 2017. SSGAN: secure steganography based on
generative adversarial networks Haichao. Pacific Rim Conference on
Multimedia : Advances in Multimedia Information Processing PCM 2017,
534–544.
Shi, H., Zhang, X.Y., Wang, S., Fu, G., Tang, J., 2019. Synchronized Detection and
Recovery of Steganographic Messages with Adversarial Learning. In: Lecture
Notes in Computer Science (Including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial
Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) 11537 LNCS, pp. 31–43.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22741-8_3.
Singh, H., 2018. Watermarking Image Encryption Using Deterministic Phase Mask
and Singular Value Decomposition in Fractional Mellin Transform Domain. IET
Image Proc. 12 (11), 1994–2001. https://doi.org/10.1049/iet-ipr.2018.5399.
Tahiri, M.A., Karmouni, H., Sayyouri, M., Qjidaa, H., 2020. Stable Computation of
Hahn Polynomials for Higher Polynomial Order. In: 2020 International
Conference on Intelligent Systems and Computer Vision, ISCV 2020, p. 6.
https://doi.org/10.1109/ISCV49265.2020.9204118.
Tahiri, M.A., Karmouni, H., Sayyouri, M., Qjidaa, H., 2022. 2D and 3D Image
Localization, Compression and Reconstruction Using New Hybrid Moments.
Springer, US.
Trujillo-Toledo, D.A., López-Bonilla, O.R., García-Guerrero, E.E., Tlelo-Cuautle, E.,
López-Mancilla, D., Guillén-Fernández, O., Inzunza-González, E., 2021. Real-
Time RGB image encryption for IoT applications using enhanced sequences
from chaotic maps. Chaos Solitons Fractals 153,. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
chaos.2021.111506 111506.
Tuli, R., Soneji, H.N., Churi, P., 2022. PixAdapt: a novel approach to adaptive image
encryption. Chaos Solitons Fractals 164, (August). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
chaos.2022.112628 112628.
Volkhonskiy, D., Nazarov, I., Burnaev, E., 2020. Steganographic Generative
Adversarial Networks, p. 97. https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2559429.
Wang, Q., Zhang, X., Zhao, X., 2022. Image encryption algorithm based on improved
zigzag transformation and quaternary DNA Coding. J. Information Security Appl.
70, (October). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jisa.2022.103340 103340.
Yamni, M., Karmouni, H., Sayyouri, M., Qjidaa, H., 2021. Robust zero-watermarking
scheme based on novel quaternion radial fractional Charlier moments.
Multimed. Tools Appl. 80 (14), 21679–21708. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-
021-10717-2.
Zhang, F., Luo, T., Jiang, G., Mei, Y.u., Haiyong, X.u., Zhou, W., 2019. A novel robust
color image watermarking method using RGB correlations. Multimed. Tools
Appl. 78 (14), 20133–20155. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-019-7326-9.