Color Image Steganalysis Algorithm Based on Quaternion Convolutional Neural Network

Most of the images on the Internet are color images, and steganalysis of color images is a very critical issue in the field of steganalysis. The current proposed color image steganalysis features mainly rely on manual design, and the steganalysis features do not fully consider the internal connections between the three channels of color images. Most steganalyzers based on deep learning are also designed for grayscale images. In recent years, the continuous introduction of advanced steganography techniques for color images has also brought more severe challenges to the steganography analysis of color images. Quaternions are a tool that can effectively represent color images, and utilizing quaternion transformations can fully exploit the correlation between color image channels. Combining quaternion theory with convolutional neural networks, this paper proposed a color image steganalysis algorithm based on quaternion convolutional neural networks. Firstly, the image is represented by quaternion, and then input into the quaternion convolutional neural network. The convolution kernel in the network is composed of quaternions, and then perform convolution and pooling. The experimental results have demonstrated the significant effectiveness of the proposed network.