StegGNN: Learning Graphical Representation for Image Steganography

Abstract

Image steganography refers to embedding secret messages within cover images while maintaining imperceptibility. Recent advances in deep learning - primarily driven by Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and architectures such as inverse neural networks, autoencoders, and generative adversarial networks - have led to notable progress. However, these frameworks are primarily built on CNN architectures, which treat images as regular grids and are limited by their receptive field size and a bias toward spatial locality. In parallel, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have recently demonstrated strong adaptability in several computer vision tasks, achieving state-of-the-art performance with architectures such as Vision GNN (ViG). This work moves in that direction and introduces StegGNN - a novel autoencoder-based, cover-agnostic image steganography framework based on GNNs. By modeling images as graph structures, our approach leverages the representational flexibility of GNNs over the grid-based rigidity of conventional CNNs. We conduct extensive experiments on standard benchmark datasets to evaluate visual quality and imperceptibility. Our results show that our GNN-based method performs comparably to existing CNN benchmarks. These findings suggest that GNNs provide a promising alternative representation for steganographic embedding and open the field of deep learning-based steganography to further exploration of GNN-based architectures.

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