A generic fingerprint image compression technique based on wave atoms decomposition

Modern fingerprint image compression and reconstruction standards used by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are based upon the popular 9/7 discrete wavelet transform. Multiresolution analysis tools have been successfully applied for fingerprint image compression for more than a decade; we propose a novel fingerprint image compression technique based on recently proposed wave atoms decomposition. Wave atoms decomposition has specifically been designed for enhanced representation of oscillatory patterns to convey temporal and spatial information. Our proposed compression scheme is based upon linear vector quantization of decomposed wave atoms representation of fingerprint images. Later quantized information is encoded with arithmetic entropy scheme. The proposed image compression standard outperforms the FBI fingerprint image compression standard, the wavelet scalar quantization (WSQ). Data mining, law enforcement, border security, and forensic applications can potentially benefit from our proposed compression scheme.