Fast Segmentation and Lossy-to-lossless Compression of Dna Microarray Images

This paper introduces a fast algorithm for microarray image segmentation and an object-based coding technique to compress the segmented DNA microarray images using modified embedded block coding with optimized truncation (EBCOT) [1]. Microarray images are segmented into foreground and background by a modified Mann-Whitney test-based algorithm, which is much faster than Chen et al.’s original one [2]. By extending EBCOT to arbitrarily shaped objects, our scheme can realize lossless coding of foreground and lossy-to-lossless coding of background separately, a feature EBCOT does not offer, and achieve better compression results than other popular coding schemes like LZW, JPEG2000 and JPEG-LS. In addition, our scheme offers similar lossy coding performance as JPEG-2000, in which EBCOT is used.