An Exploration of the Operational Ramifications of Lossless Compression of 1000 ppi Fingerprint Imagery

Abstract

This paper presents the findings of a study initially conducted to measure the operational impact of JPEG 2000 lossy compression on 1000 ppi fingerprint imagery at various levels of compression, but later expanded to include lossless compression. Lossless compression will have no impact on either Galton or non-Galton based features of a fingerprint since the compressed image is identical to the original once decompressed. The selection of a lossless compression algorithm can have operational implications in terms of effective compression performance and throughput; these implications are the focus. This study examines several such compression algorithms and compares them using criteria used to measure the effectiveness of the compression algorithm as well as its throughput using actual fingerprint imagery.