Steganography with Histogram-Preserving and Distortion-Constraining Properties

In steganographic applications, the data-hiders always hope to lower the distortion level and to preserve the original data distribution. A novel histogram-preserving and distortion-constraining steganographic scheme is proposed in the present work. After decomposing cover samples into a series of binary sequences, a number of candidate vectors representing each secret bit-block are produced, and a criterion for lowering steganographic distortion and keeping flip balance is set up for optimal selection from the candidates. This way, the original data distribution in cover sequence is preserved, and a payload-distortion performance approaching the theoretical upper bound can be achieved.