Disclosed herein is a method obtaining a magnetic resonance image of an object, comprising obtaining a first time evolution signal from a magnetic resonance signal from the object; performing a search of a compressed dictionary of magnetic resonance fingerprints to select a magnetic resonance fingerprint representative of the first time evolution signal, wherein the selected magnetic resonance fingerprint is an exact or approximate nearest neighbor match to the first time evolution signal; obtaining a magnetic resonance parameter associated with the selected fingerprint; generating the magnetic resonance image of the object from the obtained magnetic resonance parameter; and performing a second search of the compressed dictionary using the magnetic resonance image.