Abstract
Digital image security is a fundamental and tedious process on shared communication channels. Several methods have been employed for accomplishing security on digital image transmission, such as encryption, steganography, and watermarking. Image stenography and encryption are commonly used models to achieve improved security. Besides, optimal pixel selection process (OPSP) acts as a vital role in the encryption process. With this motivation, this study designs a new competitive swarm optimization with encryption based stenographic technique for digital image security, named CSOES-DIS technique. The proposed CSOES-DIS model aims to encrypt the secret image prior to the embedding process. In addition, the CSOES-DIS model applies a double chaotic digital image encryption (DCDIE) technique to encrypt the secret image, and then embedding method was implemented. Also, the OPSP can be carried out by the design of CSO algorithm and thereby increases the secrecy level. In order to portray the enhanced outcomes of the CSOES-DIS model, a comparative examination with recent methods is performed and the results reported the betterment of the CSOES-DIS model based on different measures.