Effective Electrocardiogram Steganography Based on Coefficient Alignment

This study presents two types of data hiding methods based on coefficient alignment for electrocardiogram (ECG) signals, namely, lossy and reversible ECG steganographys. The lossy method is divided into high-quality and high-capacity ECG steganography, both of which are capable of hiding confidential patient data in ECG signals. The reversible data hiding method can not only hide secret messages but also completely restore the original ECG signal after bit extraction. Simulations confirmed that the perceived quality generated by the lossy ECG steganography methods was good, while hiding capacity was acceptable. In addition, these methods have a certain degree of robustness, which is rare in conventional ECG stegangraphy schemes. Moreover, the proposed reversible ECG steganography method can not only successfully extract hidden messages but also completely recover the original ECG data.