Abstract: An apparatus for compressing an image including: a principal component analyzer, a puncture, a truncator, and a projector. The principal component analyzer iteratively performs a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on a selected portion of the image, wherein each resulting orthogonal basis set has “N” basis vectors. The puncturer punctures selected dimensional components of the orthogonal basis set resulting from each PCA of the selected portion of the image, without removing any of the associated “N” basis vectors thereof. The truncator removes selected basis vectors of a final one of the resulting orthogonal basis sets of the principal component analyzer, thereby forming a truncated basis set for compression of the selected portion of the image. The projector projects the image onto the truncated basis set thereby obtaining coefficients of the selected portion of the image, relative to the truncated basis set.