How to Reduce the Size of Bank Check Image Archive?

TIFF group 4 is the dominant format for storing bitonal bank check images in digital archives. Kept for at least seven years these images demand huge volume of disk space. The image size becomes a critical resource from the bandwidth perspective in the era of the widespread Internet banking and Image exchange between various financial institutions. This paper proposes an approach for lossy compression of TIFF group 4 images able to reducing the compressed size by an extra 30%. The approach consists of the two separate steps: generic preprocessing, applicable to any document, and the check context-sensitive step that is specific to the check image compression. Compared to the widely used resolution reduction method, the proposed approach preserves the essential information in the image, providing comparable compression rates.