An Example in Action

Without wavelet technology, digitizing the FBI's constantly growing database of over 200 million fingerprint records (originally stored as inked impressions on paper cards) would have required an unmanageable 2,000 terabytes of storage and filled over a billion 3.5-inch high-density floppy disks. Faced with this digital storage dilemma, the FBI researched a variety of image compression techniques before finally settling on one robust enough to preserve vital fine-scale fingerprint image details--a breakthrough wavelet-based image coding algorithm developed in cooperation with Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers answered the call.

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