Hybrid Huffman Tree Model for Securing Medical Data Using Steganography

Steganography is the method by which confidential data can be camouflaged in plain sight with the help of an unsuspecting “cover” data. Digital Steganography refers to the art of concealing a confidential piece of information inside a non-suspecting carrier. In image steganography, within a cover image, a secret message is concealed and it is important to make sure there should not be any alterations in the visual or statistical features of the image. The proposed work makes use of a number of concepts like Edge Detection of cover image, Least Significant Bit Replacement of edge pixels, Huffman Tree compression, and mutation, to name a few. Least Significant Bit substitution is a very popular method due to its ease of implementation and high data hiding capacity. The secret key used for swapping in the initial tree is converted from binary to decimal format and is sent through some other secure transmission channel to increase security.