Gray Code Driven Multi Least Significant Bit Substitution for Secure Data Hiding in 3D Mesh Objects

ABSTRACT As technology continues to evolve, the demand for reliable methods of secure communication has grown significantly. In this context, concealing data in 3D mesh models has emerged as a promising strategy for safeguarding confidential information during transmission. In this proposed work, we present a novel data hiding technique for 3D mesh models that leverages gray code sequence generation in combination with least significant bit substitution. The proposed approach utilizes gray code both for vertex coordinate selection and for scrambling the secret message, thereby enhancing security against unauthorized extraction. To evaluate performance, experiments were conducted on three widely used datasets which include meshes with varying vertex densities, ranging from low to high complexity. The method demonstrates strong robustness under various attacks, while maintaining high imperceptibility. Experimental results show that the scheme achieves a payload capacity of 10 bpv for 5 LSB bits substitution per component of the vertices, with promising peak signal‐to‐noise ratio values (PSNR > 300 dB), confirming its effectiveness for secure and imperceptible data embedding in 3D mesh environments.