MDE-based image steganography with large embedding capacity

The big data era calls for image steganography with large embedding capacity and good image quality. Previous methods described in the literature pay more attention to image quality rather than payload. This paper proposes a large capacity steganographic method based on modification direction exploitation and pixel pair matching. By virtue of a reference matrix with particular properties, one or two 9-ary digits can be embedded into each cover pixel pair depending on different payloads. Experimental results demonstrate high embedding capacity as well as good image quality and security.