Background/Objectives: Steganographic techniques embed a secret to host cover to conceal its content. Among several methods for data embedding, Exploiting Modification Direction (EMD), which is simple and efficient, has attracted a lot of attention lately. Methods/Statistical Analysis: However, the recent schemes based on this method have high stegoimage distortion. In this paper, we employ combinatorial optimization algorithm, also known as Hungarian algorithm to reorganize the secret

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... . Findings: As a result, we can remarkably reduce the distortion and achieve the best quality of stego-image. Moreover, experimental results show that our scheme is stable under different scenarios regardless of common case, worst case, or best case. Application/Improvements: Due to the simplicity and efficiency, the method is suitable for real-time application. This method is improved further to enhance embedding capacity while remaining the image quality.