Lossless Compression of Microarray Images

Microarray experiments are characterized by a massive amount of data in the form of images. Since the interest in microarray technology is growing nowadays, a large number of microarray images is currently being produced. In this paper, we present a lossless method for efficiently compress microarray images based on arithmetic coding using a 3D context model. Our method produces an embedded bit-stream that allows progressive decoding. We present the compression results using a large set of images and compare these results with three image coding standards, namely, lossless JPEG2000, JBIG and JPEG-LS. We also compare our results with the two most recent specialized methods, using a common set of images. The proposed method gives better results for all images of the test set.