WPF what is the best way to cache an image data - wpf

Question

I have an application where I get lot of images in the form of byte[],
I store them in the memory for later use by the user demand
Should I store them in byte[]? or there is another way to store them for quicker loading on user demand?
My code that loads the image is like this
private static BitmapImage LoadImage(byte[] imageData)
{
if (imageData == null || imageData.Length == 0) return null;
var image = new BitmapImage();
using (var mem = new MemoryStream(imageData))
{
image.BeginInit();
image.CacheOption = BitmapCacheOption.OnLoad;
image.StreamSource = mem;
image.EndInit();
}
image.Freeze();
return image;
}
Thank you!
Ron

Answer 1

Could store the images in a Dictionary.
The key is the unique identifier (E.G. Int32).
The image could be stored as byte[] or BitmapImage
If you store it as BitmapImage you have to convert the byte[] up front
But then you don't need to convert on demand
Dictionary<Int32, byte[]>
or
Dictionary<Int32, BitmapImage>
Pretty sure BitmapImage is going to be bigger so converting on demand would use less memory.
Your question said a lot of images but you also asked for quicker user loading.
Test both ways.