High performance Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and Inverse FFT (IFFT) are essential in Digital Signal Processing for applications like biosignal compression, radar, image and voice processing. FFT is computationally intensive and requires real-time processing. This paper presents novel 2-D FFT and IFFT algorithms optimized for VLSI hardware implementation. Algorithms coded in MATLAB were tested on 2D color images. Reconstructed images were visually indistinguishable from original, with reconstructed quality >35 dB. © 2013 IEEE. © 2013 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.