LAUSR

Abstract. Steganography is a technique for concealing sensitive information behind a specific media source, such as an image, audio, or video file, in such a way that the concealed data are invisible to everyone. Many algorithms have been developed to optimize this process for better output. We aim to identify the different optimization algorithms used in image steganography after embedding the data to improve the resilience, visibility, and payload carrying capacity. Additionally, we highlight several bioinspired algorithms, including particle swarm optimization, ant colony optimization, firefly optimization, and artificial bee colony optimization, and evaluate through performance measures such as peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and mean square error (MSE). The performance metrics generated from the collected data indicate that the firefly method produced a higher PSNR and a lower MSE, namely 72.42 dB and 0.13, respectively. The methods are evaluated in terms of their ability for data embedding, robustness, and imperceptibility.