DNA Image Storage Using a Scheme Based on Fuzzy Matching on Natural Genome.

Among lots of emerging storage technologies, DNA storage is with great potential for its high data storage density and low maintenance cost. However, DNA synthesis and sequencing, the two enabling technologies for DNA storage, are of high cost and inefficient in information writing and reading, which postpones the commercialization of DNA storage. Considering the expensive DNA synthesis cost, a DNA storage system based on natural genomes is devised to compress images by using fuzzy matching and image processing technology, which can reduce the cost of storing images in the DNA medium. According to our devised DNA storage scheme, the number of nucleotide sequences to be synthesized can be reduced by about 90% and the visual quality of retrieved images can be compared with conventional algorithms. Furthermore, because of no dependence among index sequences generated by fuzzy matching, the robustness of our scheme is better than that of those DNA storage schemes directly using conventional algorithms to compress images. Finally, we have investigated the factors that may influence images' fuzzy matching, including genome size, GC content and relative entropy, which can be used to design a criterion to select better genomes for a given image.