Browsing by Author "Ciftci, Efe"

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Htstego: a Halftone Steganography Utility
(Elsevier, 2024) Ciftci, Efe; Suemer, Emre
Steganography, the art and science of concealing secret information within seemingly innocent cover media, is crucial in secure information exchange and data protection. This work introduces a free and open -source steganography software for concealing plaintext payloads within halftone images, accompanied by a payload extraction utility to retrieve payloads from images generated using the featured utility. The utility can compress the payload before hiding and generate color and binary stego halftone images via a selection of methods, including ordered dithering and error diffusion, with support for custom-defined error diffusion kernels. A distinguishing feature of the utility is the distribution of payloads across multiple outputs to enhance payload security against unauthorized extraction and eliminate the necessity of the original image during payload extraction. Additionally, the utility provides quantitative assessments of image quality for the produced images, which is used in this paper to showcase the efficiency of the featured method.
Citation - WoS: 9
Citation - Scopus: 15
A Novel Steganography Method for Binary and Color Halftone Images
(Peerj inc, 2022) Sumer, Emre; Ciftci, Efe
Digital steganography is the science of establishing hidden communication on electronics; the aim is to transmit a secret message to a particular recipient using unsuspicious carriers such as digital images, documents, and audio files with the help of specific hiding methods. This article proposes a novel steganography method that can hide plaintext payloads on digital halftone images. The proposed method distributes the secret message over multiple output copies and scatters parts of the message randomly within each output copy for increased security. A payload extraction algorithm, where plain carrier is not required, is implemented and presented as well. Results gained from conducted objective and subjective tests prove that the proposed steganography method is secure and can hide large payloads.
Citation - WoS: 1
Citation - Scopus: 1
Mitoseg: Mitochondria Segmentation Tool
(Elsevier, 2025) Tasel, Faris Serdar; Ciftci, Efe
Recent studies suggest a potential link between the physical structure of mitochondria and neurodegenerative diseases. With advances in Electron Microscopy techniques, it has become possible to visualize the boundary and cristae structures of mitochondria in detail. Segmenting mitochondria from microscopy images remains challenging due to image quality and complex morphology of mitochondria, including cristae and the other subcellular structures. It is crucial to automatically segment mitochondria from images exhibiting different mitochondrial boundary and crista characteristics to investigate the relationship between mitochondria and diseases. In this paper, we present a software solution for mitochondrial segmentation using an automatic validation scheme based on the general physical properties of mitochondria, highlighting boundaries in electron microscopy tomography images and generating corresponding 3D meshes. These capabilities help researchers conduct further investigations into mitochondrial morphology and explore its role in the mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases.
A Novel Steganography Method for Halftone Images
(Ieee, 2022) Ciftci, Efe; Sumer, Emre
Steganography is the common name of methods that aim secret communication. In this conference proceeding, a novel steganography algorithm that hides plaintext payload in halftone images and a payload extraction algorithm that is suitable for messages hidden using this steganography method is presented. Our steganography algorithm uses a modified pattern-based halftone image generation procedure and distributes the payload into multiple output images. The proposed method has proven to be secure and able to hide large payloads. According to the objective and subjective evaluations made, it was seen that the proposed method produces promising results.