A system and method for compressing a digital image may store a dictionary having a plurality of predetermined template patterns each identified by a code. The image may be divided into a plurality of sub-regions, and a template pattern may be selected from the dictionary that most closely matches an image features for each sub-region. A compressed data set may be generated for the image in which each sub-region is represented by a code identifying the associated template pattern. Once the data is compressed, the image may be reconstructed using the code from the compressed data set to retrieve the template pattern from the dictionary for each sub-region and may reconstruct a full image by combining the template patterns for all of the sub-regions.