A unified framework for image retrieval using keyword and visual features.

In this paper, a unified image retrieval framework based on both keyword annotations and visual features is proposed. In this framework, a set of statistical models are built based on visual features of a small set of manually labeled images to represent semantic concepts and used to propagate keywords to other unlabeled images. These models are updated periodically when more images implicitly labeled by users become available through relevance feedback. In this sense, the keyword models serve the function of accumulation and memorization of knowledge learned from user-provided relevance feedback. Furthermore, two sets of effective and efficient similarity measures and relevance feedback schemes are proposed for query by keyword scenario and query by image example scenario, respectively. Keyword models are combined with visual features in these schemes. In particular, a new, entropy-based active learning strategy is introduced to improve the efficiency of relevance feedback for query by keyword. Furthermore, a new algorithm is proposed to estimate the keyword features of the search concept for query by image example. It is shown to be more appropriate than two existing relevance feedback algorithms. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.     

Hybrid textual-visual relevance learning for content-based image retrieval

Learning effective relevance measures plays a crucial role in improving the performance of content-based image retrieval (CBIR) systems. Despite extensive research efforts for decades, how to discover and incorporate semantic information of images still poses a formidable challenge to real-world CBIR systems. In this paper, we propose a novel hybrid textual-visual relevance learning method, which mines textual relevance from image tags and combines textual relevance and visual relevance for CBIR. To alleviate the sparsity and unreliability of tags, we first perform tag completion to fill the missing tags as well as correct noisy tags of images. Then, we capture users’ semantic cognition to images by representing each image as a probability distribution over the permutations of tags. Finally, instead of early fusion, a ranking aggregation strategy is adopted to sew up textual relevance and visual relevance seamlessly. Extensive experiments on two benchmark datasets well verified the promise of our approach.     

A framework for medical image retrieval using machine learning and statistical similarity matching techniques with relevance feedback.

A content-based image retrieval (CBIR) framework for diverse collection of medical images of different imaging modalities, anatomic regions with different orientations and biological systems is proposed. Organization of images in such a database (DB) is well defined with predefined semantic categories; hence, it can be useful for category-specific searching. The proposed framework consists of machine learning methods for image prefiltering, similarity matching using statistical distance measures, and a relevance feedback (RF) scheme. To narrow down the semantic gap and increase the retrieval efficiency, we investigate both supervised and unsupervised learning techniques to associate low-level global image features (e.g., color, texture, and edge) in the projected PCA-based eigenspace with their high-level semantic and visual categories. Specially, we explore the use of a probabilistic multiclass support vector machine (SVM) and fuzzy c-mean (FCM) clustering for categorization and prefiltering of images to reduce the search space. A category-specific statistical similarity matching is proposed in a finer level on the prefiltered images. To incorporate a better perception subjectivity, an RF mechanism is also added to update the query parameters dynamically and adjust the proposed matching functions. Experiments are based on a ground-truth DB consisting of 5000 diverse medical images of 20 predefined categories. Analysis of results based on cross-validation (CV) accuracy and precision-recall for image categorization and retrieval is reported. It demonstrates the improvement, effectiveness, and efficiency achieved by the proposed framework.     

Content Based Image Retrieval Using Unclean Positive Examples

Conventional content-based image retrieval (CBIR) schemes employing relevance feedback may suffer from some problems in the practical applications. First, most ordinary users would like to complete their search in a single interaction especially on the Web. Second, it is time consuming and difficult to label a lot of negative examples with sufficient variety. Third, ordinary users may introduce some noisy examples into the query. This correspondence explores solutions to a new issue that image retrieval using unclean positive examples. In the proposed scheme, multiple feature distances are combined to obtain image similarity using classification technology. To handle the noisy positive examples, a new two-step strategy is proposed by incorporating the methods of data cleaning and noise tolerant classifier. The extensive experiments carried out on two different real image collections validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.     

DRM: dynamic region matching for image retrieval using probabilistic fuzzy matching and boosting feature selection

This paper considers the semantic gap in content-based image retrieval from two aspects: (1) irrelevant visual contents (e.g. background) scatter the mapping from image to human perception; (2) unsupervised feature extraction and similarity ranking method can not accurately reveal users’ image perception. This paper proposes a novel region-based retrieval framework—dynamic region matching (DRM) to bridge the semantic gap. (1) To address the first issue, a probabilistic fuzzy region matching algorithm is adopted to retrieve and match images precisely at object level, which copes with the problem of inaccurate segmentation. (2) To address the second issue, a “FeatureBoost” algorithm is proposed to construct an effective “eigen” feature set in relevance feedback (RF) process. And the significance of each region is dynamically updated in RF learning to automatically capture users’ region of interest (ROI). (3) User’s retrieval purpose is predicted using a novel log-learning algorithm, which predicts users’ retrieval target in the feature space using the accumulated user operations. Extensive experiments have been conducted on Corel image database with over 10,000 images. The promising experimental results reveal the effectiveness of our scheme in bridging the semantic gap.     

一种自适应提取最优特征维的相关反馈算法

本文提出一种新的相关反馈算法,该算法依据用户的反馈信息自适应选取用户最感兴趣的特征维用于图像检索,并结合正负反馈图像集的预处理,图像检索精确度得到较大提高。算法在500幅和4500幅两个图像库中做了实验,通过与RuiY特征内相关反馈算法的比较,验证了算法的高效性。     

A new SVM-based relevance feedback image retrieval using probabilistic feature and weighted kernel function

Relevance feedback (RF) is an effective approach to bridge the gap between low-level visual features and high-level semantic meanings in content-based image retrieval (CBIR). The support vector machine (SVM) based RF mechanisms have been used in different fields of image retrieval, but they often treat all positive and negative feedback samples equally, which will inevitably degrade the effectiveness of SVM-based RF approaches for CBIR. In fact, positive and negative feedback samples, different positive feedback samples, and different negative feedback samples all always have distinct properties. Moreover, each feedback interaction process is usually tedious and time-consuming because of complex visual features, so if too many times of iteration of feedback are asked, users may be impatient to interact with the CBIR system. To overcome the above limitations, we propose a new SVM-based RF approach using probabilistic feature and weighted kernel function in this paper. Firstly, the probabilistic features of each image are extracted by using principal components analysis (PCA) and the adapted Gaussian mixture models (AGMM) based dimension reduction, and the similarity is computed by employing Kullback–Leibler divergence. Secondly, the positive feedback samples and negative feedback samples are marked, and all feedback samples’ weight values are computed by utilizing the samples-based Relief feature weighting. Finally, the SVM kernel function is modified dynamically according to the feedback samples’ weight values. Extensive simulations on large databases show that the proposed algorithm is significantly more effective than the state-of-the-art approaches.     

A unified image retrieval framework on local visual and semantic concept-based feature spaces

This paper presents a learning-based unified image retrieval framework to represent images in local visual and semantic concept-based feature spaces. In this framework, a visual concept vocabulary (codebook) is automatically constructed by utilizing self-organizing map (SOM) and statistical models are built for local semantic concepts using probabilistic multi-class support vector machine (SVM). Based on these constructions, the images are represented in correlation and spatial relationship-enhanced concept feature spaces by exploiting the topology preserving local neighborhood structure of the codebook, local concept correlation statistics, and spatial relationships in individual encoded images. Finally, the features are unified by a dynamically weighted linear combination of similarity matching scheme based on the relevance feedback information. The feature weights are calculated by considering both the precision and the rank order information of the top retrieved relevant images of each representation, which adapts itself to individual searches to produce effective results. The experimental results on a photographic database of natural scenes and a bio-medical database of different imaging modalities and body parts demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.     

特征结合和相关反馈技术在医学图像检索中的应用

本文在单一检索的基础上,对基于灰度直方图的颜色特征,基于小波变换的纹理特征和基于不变矩的形状特征进行融合.为了使用户能够参与检索过程,又引入了相关反馈机制,通过调整权值使得检索的结果最终满足用户的检索要求.最后分别给出基于单一特征,特征融合和相关反馈方法的查准率和查全率,并对试验结果进行分析.     

Similarity-based online feature selection in content-based image retrieval.

Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) has been more and more important in the last decade, and the gap between high-level semantic concepts and low-level visual features hinders further performance improvement. The problem of online feature selection is critical to really bridge this gap. In this paper, we investigate online feature selection in the relevance feedback learning process to improve the retrieval performance of the region-based image retrieval system. Our contributions are mainly in three areas. 1) A novel feature selection criterion is proposed, which is based on the psychological similarity between the positive and negative training sets. 2) An effective online feature selection algorithm is implemented in a boosting manner to select the most representative features for the current query concept and combine classifiers constructed over the selected features to retrieve images. 3) To apply the proposed feature selection method in region-based image retrieval systems, we propose a novel region-based representation to describe images in a uniform feature space with real-valued fuzzy features. Our system is suitable for online relevance feedback learning in CBIR by meeting the three requirements: learning with small size training set, the intrinsic asymmetry property of training samples, and the fast response requirement. Extensive experiments, including comparisons with many state-of-the-arts, show the effectiveness of our algorithm in improving the retrieval performance and saving the processing time.     

Support Vector Machine Learning for Region‐Based Image Retrieval with Relevance Feedback

We present a relevance feedback approach based on multi‐class support vector machine (SVM) learning and cluster‐merging which can significantly improve the retrieval performance in region‐based image retrieval. Semantically relevant images may exhibit various visual characteristics and may be scattered in several classes in the feature space due to the semantic gap between low‐level features and high‐level semantics in the user's mind. To find the semantic classes through relevance feedback, the proposed method reduces the burden of completely re‐clustering the classes at iterations and classifies multiple classes. Experimental results show that the proposed method is more effective and efficient than the two‐class SVM and multi‐class relevance feedback methods.     

基于粒子群的图像检索相关反馈算法

 将粒子群优化算法的进化搜索过程与用户的反馈过程有效结合,提出了一种基于粒子群的图像检索相关反馈算法,避免了初始检索对用户认知的影响以及对反馈效果造成的局限性,并使得用户对检索目标的理解逐渐清晰,能够有效全面的搜索图片库,同时避免多次反馈造成的算法效率和检索效果之间的矛盾.通过实验验证了算法的有效性.     

Content‐Based Image Retrieval Based on Relevance Feedback and Reinforcement Learning for Medical Images

To enable a relevance feedback paradigm to evolve itself by users’ feedback, a reinforcement learning method is proposed. The feature space of the medical images is partitioned into positive and negative hypercubes by the system. Each hypercube constitutes an individual in a genetic algorithm infrastructure. The rules take recombination and mutation operators to make new rules for better exploring the feature space. The effectiveness of the rules is checked by a scoring method by which the ineffective rules will be omitted gradually and the effective ones survive. Our experiments on a set of 10,004 images from the IRMA database show that the proposed approach can better describe the semantic content of images for image retrieval with respect to other existing approaches in the literature.     

A Dynamic User Concept Pattern Learning Framework for Content-Based Image Retrieval

A rapid increase in the amount of image data and the inefficiency of traditional text-based image retrieval systems have served to make content-based image retrieval an active research field. It is crucial to effectively discover users' concept patterns through an acquired understanding of the subjective role played by humans in the retrieval process for such systems. A learning and retrieval framework is used to achieve this. It seamlessly incorporates multiple instance learning for relevant feedback to discover users concept patterns-especially in the region of greatest user interest. It also maps the local feature vector of that region to the high-level concept pattern. This underlying mapping can be progressively discovered through feedback and learning. The user guides the retrieval systems learning process using his/her focus of attention. Retrieval performance is tested to establish the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed learning and retrieval framework     

基于潜在语义分析和相关反馈的图像检索方法

为了解决传统的CBIR系统中存在的"语义鸿沟"问题,提出一种基于潜在语义索引技术(LSI)和相关反馈技术的图像检索方法.在进行图像检索时,先在HSV空间下提取颜色直方图作为底层视觉特征进行图像检索,然后引入潜在语义索引技术试图将底层特征赋予更高层次的语义含义;并且结合相关反馈技术,通过与用户交互进一步提高检索精度.实验...     

Medical image categorization and retrieval for PACS using the GMM-KL framework.

This paper presents an image representation and matching framework for image categorization in medical image archives. Categorization enables one to determine automatically, based on the image content, the examined body region and imaging modality. It is a basic step in content-based image retrieval (CBIR) systems, the goal of which is to augment text-based search with visual information analysis. CBIR systems are currently being integrated with picture archiving and communication systems for increasing the overall search capabilities and tools available to radiologists. The proposed methodology is comprised of a continuous and probabilistic image representation scheme using Gaussian mixture modeling (GMM) along with information-theoretic image matching via the Kullback-Leibler (KL) measure. The GMM-KL framework is used for matching and categorizing X-ray images by body regions. A multidimensional feature space is used to represent the image input, including intensity, texture, and spatial information. Unsupervised clustering via the GMM is used to extract coherent regions in feature space that are then used in the matching process. A dominant characteristic of the radiological images is their poor contrast and large intensity variations. This presents a challenge to matching among the images, and is handled via an illumination-invariant representation. The GMM-KL framework is evaluated for image categorization and image retrieval on a dataset of 1500 radiological images. A classification rate of 97.5% was achieved. The classification results compare favorably with reported global and local representation schemes. Precision versus recall curves indicate a strong retrieval result as compared with other state-of-the-art retrieval techniques. Finally, category models are learned and results are presented for comparing images to learned category models.     

网络图像检索重排序系统建模和仿真

基于关键词的网络图像检索得到的结果往往是海量且无序的,给用户造成不便。本文构建了一个网络图像检索结果重排序系统并进行了仿真。提出了一种利用图像SIFT局部特征构建图像间视觉Graph结构对图像进行聚类的重排序算法,并引入检索关键词的网络翻译以提高检索效率。仿真结果证明,系统的重排序结果满足网络用户的检索期望,验证了算法的有效性。     

一种针对大规模网络图像的自动标注改善算法

在对网络图像进行索引时,人们往往利用网页中图像周围的文字作为其近似标注信息,但是这些文字信息质量不高,不足以良好地描述图像内容。该文提出一种综合利用图像视觉特征、相关文本信息以及词汇间语义关系的方法对这些不精确的文本信息进行改善,从而提高图像的索引和搜索质量。在大规模数据集上的实验证明了所提出的方法能够有效改善图像的标注。     

Combining positive and negative examples in relevance feedback for content-based image retrieval

In this paper, we address some issues related to the combination of positive and negative examples to improve the efficiency of image retrieval. We start by analyzing the relevance of the negative example and how it can be interpreted and utilized to mitigate certain problems in image retrieval, such as noise, miss, the page zero problem and feature selection. Then we propose a new relevance feedback approach that uses the positive example (PE) to perform generalization and the negative example (NE) to perform specialization. In this approach, a query containing both PE and NE is processed in two steps. The first step considers the PE alone, in order to reduce the set of images participating in retrieval to a more homogeneous subset. Then, the second step considers both PE and NE and acts on the images retained in the first step. Mathematically, relevance feedback is formulated as an optimization of the intra and inter variances of the PE and NE. The proposed relevance feedback algorithm was implemented in our image retrieval system, which we tested on a collection of more than 10,000 images. The experimental results show how the NE as considered in our model can contribute in improving the relevance of the images retrieved.