Adding semantics to image-region annotations with the Name-It-Game

In this paper we present the Name-It-Game, an interactive multimedia game fostering the swift creation of a large data set of region-based image annotations. Compared to existing annotation games, we consider an added semantic structure, by means of the WordNet ontology, the main innovation of the Name-It-Game. Using an ontology-powered game, instead of the more traditional annotation tools, potentially makes region-based image labeling more fun and accessible for every type of user. However, the current games often present the players with hard-to-guess objects. To prevent this from happening in the Name-It-Game, we successfully identify WordNet categories which filter out hard-to-guess objects. To verify the speed of the annotation process, we compare the online Name-It-Game with a desktop tool with similar features. Results show that the Name-It-Game outperforms this tool for semantic region-based image labeling. Lastly, we measure the accuracy of the produced segmentations and compare them with carefully created LabelMe segmentations. Judging from the quantitative and qualitative results, we believe the segmentations are competitive to those of LabelMe, especially when averaged over multiple games. By adding semantics to region-based image annotations, using the Name-It-Game, we have opened up an efficient means to provide precious labels in a playful manner.     

基于低秩稀疏分解优化的图像标签完备

大量上传的网络图像因用户语义标注的随意性,造成了图像标签的不完备,大大降低了图像检索的效率.低秩稀疏是一种有效降低数据噪声的方法.为提高图像语义标签完备的准确度,提出一种基于低秩稀疏分解优化(LRSDO)的图像标签完备方法.首先结合待完备图像的视觉特征和语义搜索其近邻图像集;然后通过低秩稀疏分解模型获得其视觉特征与语义之间的映射关系,并以此预测该图像的候选标签;最后使用面向个体的标签共现频率方法对候选标签进行去噪优化,进而实现对其更加准确的自动图像标签完备.在基准数据集Corel5K和真实数据集Flickr30Concepts上进行了实验,结果表明,该方法在图像标签完备的平均准确率,平均召回率和覆盖率上均表现出更优的性能.     

Image Annotation by Propagating Labels from Semantic Neighbourhoods

Automatic image annotation aims at predicting a set of semantic labels for an image. Because of large annotation vocabulary, there exist large variations in the number of images corresponding to different labels (“class-imbalance”). Additionally, due to the limitations of human annotation, several images are not annotated with all the relevant labels (“incomplete-labelling”). These two issues affect the performance of most of the existing image annotation models. In this work, we propose 2-pass k-nearest neighbour (2PKNN) algorithm. It is a two-step variant of the classical k-nearest neighbour algorithm, that tries to address these issues in the image annotation task. The first step of 2PKNN uses “image-to-label” similarities, while the second step uses “image-to-image” similarities, thus combining the benefits of both. We also propose a metric learning framework over 2PKNN. This is done in a large margin set-up by generalizing a well-known (single-label) classification metric learning algorithm for multi-label data. In addition to the features provided by Guillaumin et al. (2009) that are used by almost all the recent image annotation methods, we benchmark using new features that include features extracted from a generic convolutional neural network model and those computed using modern encoding techniques. We also learn linear and kernelized cross-modal embeddings over different feature combinations to reduce semantic gap between visual features and textual labels. Extensive evaluations on four image annotation datasets (Corel-5K, ESP-Game, IAPR-TC12 and MIRFlickr-25K) demonstrate that our method achieves promising results, and establishes a new state-of-the-art on the prevailing image annotation datasets.     

Incorporating multiple SVMs for automatic image annotation

In this paper, a novel automatic image annotation system is proposed, which integrates two sets of support vector machines (SVMs), namely the multiple instance learning (MIL)-based and global-feature-based SVMs, for annotation. The MIL-based bag features are obtained by applying MIL on the image blocks, where the enhanced diversity density (DD) algorithm and a faster searching algorithm are applied to improve the efficiency and accuracy. They are further input to a set of SVMs for finding the optimum hyperplanes to annotate training images. Similarly, global color and texture features, including color histogram and modified edge histogram, are fed into another set of SVMs for categorizing training images. Consequently, two sets of image features are constructed for each test image and are, respectively, sent to the two sets of SVMs, whose outputs are incorporated by an automatic weight estimation method to obtain the final annotation results. Our proposed annotation approach demonstrates a promising performance for an image database of 12 000 general-purpose images from COREL, as compared with some current peer systems in the literature.     

Image annotation refinement via 2P-KNN based group sparse reconstruction

Image annotation aims at predicting labels that can accurately describe the semantic information of images. In the past few years, many methods have been proposed to solve the image annotation problem. However, the predicted labels of the images by these methods are usually incomplete, insufficient and noisy, which is unsatisfactory. In this paper, we propose a new method denoted as 2PKNN-GSR (Group Sparse Reconstruction) for image annotation and label refinement. First, we get the predicted labels of the testing images using the traditional method, i.e., a two-step variant of the classical K-nearest neighbor algorithm, called 2PKNN. Then, according to the obtained labels, we divide the K nearest neighbors of an image in the training images into several groups. Finally, we utilize the group sparse reconstruction algorithm to refine the annotated label results which are obtained in the first step. Experimental results on three standard datasets, i.e., Corel 5K, IAPR TC12 and ESP Game, show the superior performance of the proposed method compared with the state-of-the-art methods.

     

基于连续预测的半监督学习图像语义标注

为了在图像底层特征与高层语义之间建立关系,提高图像自动标注的精确度,结合基于图学习的方法和基于分类的标注算法,提出了基于连续预测的半监督学习图像语义标注的方法,并对该方法的复杂度进行分析。该方法利用标签数据提供的信息和标签事例与无标签事例之间的关系,根据邻接点(事例)属于同一个类的事实,构建K邻近图。用一个基于图的分类器,通过核函数有效地计算邻接信息。在建立图的基础上,把经过划分后的样本节点集通过基于连续预测的多标签半监督学习方法进行标签传递。实验表明,提出的算法在图像标注中的标注词的平均查准率、平均查全率方面有显著的提高。     

基于本体的图像自动标注

提出一种新的图像本体标注的框架,结合领域本体中概念的关系,通过层次概率标注来获得图像高层语义概念的标注,实现待标注图像语义的自动标注。我们将图像的语义可以定义为属性概念和高层抽象概念,采用二次标注方法实现对于图像语义的自动标注。实验证明,本文的方法可以使图像获得丰富的高层抽象语义概念标注,从而缩小"语义鸿沟",有效提高了检索的效率和精确度。     

基于数据均衡的增进式深度自动图像标注

自动图像标注是一个包含众多标签、多样特征的富有挑战性的研究问题,是新一代图像检索与图像理解的关键步骤.针对传统基于浅层机器学习标注算法标注效率低下、难以处理复杂分类任务的问题,本文提出了基于栈式自动编码器（SAE）的自动图像标注算法,提升了标注效率和标注效果.全文主要针对图像标注数据不平衡问题,提出两种解决思路：对于标注模型,我们提出一种增强训练中低频标签的平衡栈式自动编码器（B-SAE）,较好地改善了中低频标签的标注效果.并在此模型基础上提出一种分组强化训练B-SAE子模型的鲁棒平衡栈式自动编码器算法（RB-SAE）,提升了标注的稳定性,从而保证模型本身具有较强地处理不平衡数据的能力;对于标注过程,我们以未知图像作为出发点,首先构造未知图像的局部均衡数据集,并判定该图像的高低频属性来决定不同的标注过程,局部语义传播算法（SP）标注中低频图像,RB-SAE算法标注高频图像,形成属性判别的标注框架（ADA）,保证了标注过程具有较强地应对不平衡数据的能力,从而提升整体图像标注效果.通过在三个公共数据集上进行实验验证,结果表明,本文方法在许多指标上相比以往方法均有较大提高.     

基于分类融合和关联规则挖掘的图像语义标注

图像语义自动标注问题是现阶段一个具有挑战性的难题。在跨媒体相关模型基础上,提出了融合图像类别信息的图像语义标注新方法,并利用关联规则挖掘算法改善标注结果。首先对图像进行低层特征提取,用“视觉词袋”描述图像;然后对图像特征分别进行K-means聚类和基于支持向量机的多类别分类,得到图像相似性关系和类别信息;计算语义标签和图像之间的概率关系,并将图像类别信息作为权重融合到标签的统计概率中,得到候选标注词集;最后以候选标注词概率为依据,利用改善的关联规则挖掘算法挖掘文本关联度,并对候选标注词集进行等频离散化处理,从而得到最终标注结果。在图像集Corel上进行的标注实验取得了较为理想的标注结果。     

结合相关反馈日志与语义网络的图像标注

连接高层语义和低层视觉特征的图像语义标注技术能够很好地表示图像的语义,提出并实现了一种结合相关反馈日志与语义网络的图像标注方法。该方法以收集的用户相关反馈日志为基础获得图像的语义信息,通过计算图像间的语义相似度进行语义聚类并采用语义传播的方式实现图像的语义标注。实验结果表明,随着相关反馈日志库的不断扩充,图像库中越来越多的图像会在反馈的过程中得到标注且标注的准确率会随着反馈次数的增加而趋于稳定。     

Image modeling with combined optimization techniques for image semantic annotation

Image semantic annotation can be viewed as a multi-class classification problem, which maps image features to semantic class labels, through the procedures of image modeling and image semantic mapping. Bayesian classifier is usually adopted for image semantic annotation which classifies image features into class labels. In order to improve the accuracy and efficiency of classifier in image annotation, we propose a combined optimization method which incorporates affinity propagation algorithm, optimizing training data algorithm, and modeling prior distribution with Gaussian mixture model to build Bayesian classifier. The experiment results illustrate that the classifier performance is improved for image semantic annotation with proposed method.     

基于图文混排的传统服饰图像以文标图算法

针对高效解读和智能处理海量图文资料是一项极具挑战并具有实用价值工作,而自动标注精度 又面临依赖训练样本的难题,提出了一种基于数字图文混排书籍以文标图方法,由混排版式识别预处理、领域 图像语义标签构建和大标签空间以文标图算法 3 部分组成。首先,通过提出的混排版式识别离算法,提取数字 图文混排版式中图像、标题及描述文本等内容。然后,基于数字服饰图像语义标签,建立传统文化领域词库 (PatternNet),最后针对领域词库标签空间特点,提出一种改进大标签空间的以文标图算法,并在服饰类图文混 排书籍上进行仿真实验,通过对比其他数据集,验证了该算法的实效性。     

Effective image annotation for searches using multilevel semantics

There is an increasing need for automatic image annotation tools to enable effective image searching in digital libraries. In this paper, we present a novel probabilistic model for image annotation based on content-based image retrieval techniques and statistical analysis. One key difficulty in applying statistical methods to the annotation of images is that the number of manually labeled images used to train the methods is normally insufficient. Numerous keywords cannot be correctly assigned to appropriate images due to lacking or missing information in the labeled image databases. To deal with this challenging problem, we also propose an enhanced model in which the annotated keywords of a new image are defined in terms of their similarity at different semantic levels, including the image level, keyword level, and concept level. To avoid missing some relevant keywords, the model labels the keywords with the same concepts as the new image. Our experimental results show that the proposed models are effective for annotating images that have different qualities of training data.     

基于语义标签生成和偏序结构的图像层级分类

智能电子设备和互联网的普及,使得图像数据爆炸性膨胀.为了有效管理复杂图像资源,本文提出了一种基于加权语义邻近集和形式概念偏序结构的图像层级分类方法.首先,根据图像语义相关分数,对不同程度语义设定自适应权系数,从训练图库中构建加权语义邻近集,通过对语义邻近集中图像的词频分布进行判决,自动生成图像的多个语义标签;然后,以每幅图像为对象,以每幅图像自动生成的语义标签为属性,构建形式背景,通过偏序结构算法对复杂图像集进行有效的层级分类.本文方法可以得到图像库中图像之间明确的结构关系和图像类别之间的从属关系,为复杂图像大数据进行层级分类管理提供了有效的思路.本文对Corel5k、EspGame和Iaprtc12三个数据库进行了图像标注实验,证明了标注的语义完整性和主要语义的准确性;并对Corel5k数据库进行了图像的层级分类实验,结果表明层级分类效果显著.     

Combining global, regional and contextual features for automatic image annotation

This paper presents a novel approach to automatic image annotation which combines global, regional, and contextual features by an extended cross-media relevance model. Unlike typical image annotation methods which use either global or regional features exclusively, as well as neglect the textual context information among the annotated words, the proposed approach incorporates the three kinds of information which are helpful to describe image semantics to annotate images by estimating their joint probability. Specifically, we describe the global features as a distribution vector of visual topics and model the textual context as a multinomial distribution. The global features provide the global distribution of visual topics over an image, while the textual context relaxes the assumption of mutual independence among annotated words which is commonly adopted in most existing methods. Both the global features and textual context are learned by a probability latent semantic analysis approach from the training data. The experiments over 5k Corel images have shown that combining these three kinds of information is beneficial in image annotation.     

基于形式概念分析的图像场景语义标注模型

为生成有效表示图像场景语义的视觉词典,提高场景语义标注性能,提出一种基于形式概念分析(FCA)的图像场景语义标注模型。该方法首先将训练图像集与其初始的视觉词典抽象为形式背景,采用信息熵标识了各视觉单词的权重,并分别构造了各场景类别概念格结构;然后再利用各视觉单词权重的均值刻画概念格内涵上各组合视觉单词标注图像的贡献,按照类别视觉词典生成阈值,从格结构上有效提取了标注各类场景图像语义的视觉词典;最后,利用K最近邻标注测试图像的场景语义。在Fei-Fei Scene 13类自然场景图像数据集上进行实验,并与Fei-Fei方法和Bai方法相比,结果表明该方法在β=0.05和γ=15时,标注分类精度更优。     

Efficient region-aware large graph construction towards scalable multi-label propagation

With fast growing number of images on photo-sharing websites such as Flickr and Picasa, it is in urgent need to develop scalable multi-label propagation algorithms for image indexing, management and retrieval. It has been well acknowledged that analysis in semantic region level may greatly improve image annotation performance compared to that in the holistic image level. However, region level approach increases the data scale to several orders of magnitude and proposes new challenges to most existing algorithms. In this work, we present a novel framework to effectively compute pairwise image similarity by accumulating the information of semantic image regions. Firstly, each image is encoded as Bag-of-Regions based on multiple image segmentations. Secondly, all image regions are separated into buckets with efficient locality-sensitive hashing (LSH) method, which guarantees high collision probabilities for similar regions. The k-nearest neighbors of each image and the corresponding similarities can be efficiently approximated with these indexed patches. Lastly, the sparse and region-aware image similarity matrix is fed into the multi-label extension of the entropic graph regularized semi-supervised learning algorithm [1]. In combination they naturally yield the capability of handling large-scale dataset. Extensive experiments on NUS-WIDE (260k images) and COREL-5k datasets validate the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed framework for region-aware and scalable multi-label propagation.     

使用基于SVM的否定概率和法的图像标注

在基于内容的图像检索中,建立图像底层视觉特征与高层语义的联系是个难题.对此提出了一种为图像提供语义标签的标注方法.先建立小规模图像库为训练集,库中每个图像标有单一的语义标签,再利用其底层特征,以SVM为子分类器,“否定概率和”法为合成方法构建基于成对耦合方式（PWC）的多类分类器,并对未标注的图像进行分类,结果以N维标注向量表示,实验表明,与一对多方式（OPC）的多类分类器及使用概率和法的PWC相比,“否定概率和”法性能更好.