Progressive decoding of DNA-stored JPEG data with on-the-fly error correction

DNA storage is a developing field that uses DNA to archive digital data, owing to its superior information density and stability compared to conventional storage mediums. Although DNA storage techniques have been performed on a significant scale, challenges arise from the synthesis and sequencing of data-encoded oligonucleotides. Synthesis of DNA introduces significant noise into the process. Consequently, high-read-quality sequencers are often required, making the process expensive and lack scalability. Recent DNA storage methods use error correction codes to encode data with resilience to noise, at a cost of additional redundancy and decoding complexity. Given such constraints and challenges, the main objective we seek to deliver is a time- and storage-efficient image coding strategy. We introduce a novel DNA-based progressive JPEG decoder with on-the-fly error-correcting & rendering capability. This system can progressively decode an image while also correcting for errors as they occur. It modifies standard JPEG encoding methods to store data in localized chunks and uses adapted Raptor error-correction codes to improve the speed and quality of partial decoding. We optimized and evaluated the method under varying levels of simulated Oxford Nanopore Technologies sequencing errors, as well as show how different parts of the pipeline improve real-time decoding capability. We tested the proposed pipeline with synthesized oligonucleotides and analyzed recovery profiles. Here, we present the first progressive image decoding schema, aimed at realizing real-time rendering of DNA-stored images.