A Preliminary Study on the Feasibility of Storing Fingerprint and Iris Image Data in 2D-Barcodes

Barcodes represent a cost-efficient alternative to chip-based data storage. In this work we investigate the feasibility of storing fingerprint and iris image data in compact 2D barcodes. In accordance to proposed standards different types of fingerprint and iris images are compressed employing cascades of lossy image and lossless data compression algorithms. Obtained results confirm that capacities of stacked 2D barcodes enable a standard-compliant chip-less embedding of biometric image data. Furthermore, custom-built compression techniques might allow for an even more compact storage of biometric data.