Improving Blind Steganalysis in Spatial Domain using a Criterion to Choose the Appropriate Steganalyzer between CNN and SRM+EC

Conventional state-of-the-art image steganalysis approaches usually consist of a classifier trained with features provided by rich image models. As both features extraction and classification steps are perfectly embodied in the deep learning architecture called Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), different studies have tried to design a CNN-based steganalyzer. The network designed by Xu et al. is the first competitive CNN with the combination Spatial Rich Models (SRM) and Ensemble Classifier (EC) providing detection performances of the same order. In this work we propose a criterion to choose either the CNN or the SRM+EC method for a given input image. Our approach is studied with three different steganographic spatial domain algorithms: S-UNIWARD, MiPOD, and HILL, using the Tensorflow computing platform, and exhibits detection capabilities better than each method alone. Furthermore, as SRM+EC and the CNN are both only trained with a single embedding algorithm, namely MiPOD, the proposed method can be seen as an approach for blind steganalysis. In blind detection, error rates are respectively of 16% for S-UNIWARD, 16% for MiPOD, and 17% for HILL on the BOSSBase with a payload of 0.4 bpp. For 0.1 bpp, the respective corresponding error rates are of 39%, 38%, and 41%, and are always better than the ones provided by SRM+EC.