Image steganography algorithm based on key matrix generated by quantum walks

This paper is to present a new image steganography technique based on quantum walks (QWs). In the proposed technique, the secret image is a gray-scale and the cover is a color image. The main contribution of QWs is to select one channel from (RGB) of the cover image that will host the secret bits. The performed analysis provides the proposed approach a strong base in the field of image steganography. The mean values of the results obtained based on analysis are as follows: PSNR is 48.5978, SSIM is 0.9964, UIQ is 0.9727, NCC is 0.996, and the capacity is 2-bit/pixel.