  We present the results from an analysis of surface photometry of B, R, and
Halpha images of a total of 114 nearby galaxies drawn from the Palomar/Las
Campanas Imaging Atlas of Blue Compact Dwarf galaxies. Surface brightness and
color profiles for the complete sample have been obtained. We determine the
exponential and Sersic profiles that best fit the surface brightness
distribution of the underlying stellar population detected in these galaxies.
We also compute the (B-R) color and total absolute magnitude of the underlying
stellar population and compared them to the integrated properties of the
galaxies in the sample. Our analysis shows that the (B-R) color of the
underlying population is systematically redder than the integrated color,
except in those galaxies where the integrated colors are strongly contaminated
by line and nebular-continuum emission. We also find that galaxies with
relatively red underlying stellar populations (typically (B-R)>~1mag) show
structural properties compatible with those of dwarf elliptical galaxies (i.e.
a smooth light distribution, fainter extrapolated central surface brightness
and larger scale lengths than BCD galaxies with blue underlying stellar
populations). At least ~15% of the galaxies in the sample are compatible with
being dwarf elliptical (dE) galaxies experiencing a burst of star formation.
For the remaining BCD galaxies in the sample we do not find any correlation
between the recent star formation activity and their structural differences
with respect to other types of dwarf galaxies.
