Compression of fingerprint images using wavelet transform and vector quantization

In this paper the problem of compression of fingerprint images is addressed. The presented method utilises wavelet transform followed by vector quantization. We compare our approach with the FBI fingerprint compression standard based on wavelet transform and scalar quantization. Due to the use of the vector instead of scalar quantization, a simplified wavelet expansion tree structure is achieved. This leads to significant reduction in time of encoding without noticeable loss in the quality of reconstructed images