DNA-based image storage with substitution and indel error correction

DNA molecules have been proposed as a support for long-term data storage. This enables a quaternary representation through the four nucleotides prevalent in the genetic material of living beings. Recently, the JPEG Committee launched a Call for Proposals for image coding algorithms in DNA support, retaining the top performer as its starting point for the development of a new standard. However, the process of storage and sequencing of molecules usually results in errors, but this additional challenge was not fully addressed in the initial JPEG DNA solution. This paper proposes a generalized architecture, for which the original JPEG DNA solution is a specific case, that allows for the inclusion of error-correcting capabilities. Moreover, a nucleotide decoding mechanism capable of translating insertion and deletion errors into substitutions is proposed and combined with ReedSolomon codes in the architecture to achieve correct decoding of images even in the presence of substitution and indel errors. The proposed mechanism is observed to achieve superior results in terms of information density when compared to state-of-the-art methods.