Application of quantisation‐based deep‐learning model compression in JPEG image steganalysis

Steganography can hide secret information in an innocent cover medium. Its opponent is steganalysis, which is used to discriminate whether a suspicious carrier contains a hidden message or not. With the rapid development of deep‐learning frameworks, deep‐learning‐based steganalytic models have hold the dominant position in the field of steganalysis. In recent years, some scholars have successfully utilised model compression methods in the field of image classification. However, as far as the authors know, no prior works are devoted to the application of model compression methods in the field of deep‐learning‐based steganalysis. In this study, the authors explore the effect of two quantisation schemes, namely 8‐bit calculation and floating‐point calculation, on the performance of XuNet, a state‐of‐the‐art deep‐learning steganalytic model. The experimental results show that the two deep‐learning model quantisation schemes are applicable to steganalysis. It is even possible to compress the network size while retaining satisfactory performance.