Coding of fingerprint images using binary subband decomposition and vector quantization

In this paper, compression of binary digital fingerprint images is considered. High compression ratios for fingerprint images is essential for handling huge amount of images in databases. In our method, the fingerprint image is first processed by a binary nonlinear subband decomposition filter bank and the resulting subimages are coded using vector quantizers designed for quantizing binary images. It is observed that the discriminating properties of the fingerprint, images are preserved at very low bit rates. Simulation results are presented.