Stripe-Based Futurism-like Image—A New Type of Art and Its Application to Covert Communication

The generation of art images using computers has been studied recently. A new type of art image called a stripe-based Futurism-like image, and its application to covert communication, are proposed. Firstly, a source image is segmented into regions. The region corners are extracted by chain code analysis, and polygon approximation is conducted accordingly to simplify the region shapes. Then, each region is partitioned into stripes according to the region direction and the stripes are filled with the region’s average color, or the color white alternatively, resulting in an image with the abstraction and dynamism of Futurism. Furthermore, a data hiding method is proposed to embed a secret message into the created art image by filling the stripes with the aforementioned colors in a message-dependent fashion, with the message bits being adjusted beforehand by a 2-to-3 mapping scheme to avoid filling a region’s stripes with consecutive identical colors. Furthermore, hidden data security is enhanced by randomizing both the message-bit embedding order and the region processing sequence via the use of a secret key. By processing a database of 100 images, good experimental results of art image creation and secure message hiding have been obtained, showing the feasibility of the proposed methods for covert communication.