MQ-Coder inspired arithmetic coder for synthetic DNA data storage

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel DNA-specific arithmetic coding method integrated into an image compression system, optimized for the error-prone processes of DNA data storage, improving efficiency and robustness.

Contribution

Introduces a new DNA-inspired arithmetic coder tailored for DNA data storage, enhancing compression efficiency and error resilience in DNA-based image encoding.

Findings

Effective compression of images into DNA sequences.

Improved robustness against DNA storage errors.

Successful integration into a DNA-compatible image codec.

Abstract

Over the past years, the ever-growing trend on data storage demand, more specifically for "cold" data (i.e. rarely accessed), has motivated research for alternative systems of data storage. Because of its biochemical characteristics, synthetic DNA molecules are now considered as serious candidates for this new kind of storage. This paper introduces a novel arithmetic coder for DNA data storage, and presents some results on a lossy JPEG 2000 based image compression method adapted for DNA data storage that uses this novel coder. The DNA coding algorithms presented here have been designed to efficiently compress images, encode them into a quaternary code, and finally store them into synthetic DNA molecules. This work also aims at making the compression models better fit the problematic that we encounter when storing data into DNA, namely the fact that the DNA writing, storing and reading methods are error prone processes. The main take away of this work is our arithmetic coder and it's integration into a performant image codec.