INNSE: Invertible neural network-based DNA image storage with self-correction encoding

DNA storage has become an alternative to silicon-based storage of media. However, when used to store multimodal data such as images, it fails to take full advantage of the characteristics of high correlation and variability present in such data, and currently remains inferior in terms of encoding density and time complexity. It also has the shortcoming of weak performance in terms of error correction methods to address insertion and deletion errors caused by error crosstalk. Therefore, we proposed an invertible neural network-based DNA image storage self-correction encoding method (INNSE) that uses the invertibility of network to perform up-down sampling processing on image and video data, thereby greatly reducing the number of DNA sequences required for data storage. A codebook generator was then designed to encode low-dimensional vectors into DNA sequences that meet various constraints. Finally, a self-correction method was constructed to achieve DNA sequence error correction at the base level without adding any redundant information. Our experimental results showed that, compared to the Yin-Yang algorithm, the encoding density of INNSE was increased by 3×, encoding time complexity was reduced by 95.26%. Under a simulated error rate of 2%, PSNR and SSIM were raised by 80.88% and 63.82%, respectively, proving that INNSE has significant advantages in encoding performance and error correction ability.