CLUE: cluster-based retrieval of images by unsupervised learning.

In a typical content-based image retrieval (CBIR) system, target images (images in the database) are sorted by feature similarities with respect to the query. Similarities among target images are usually ignored. This paper introduces a new technique, cluster-based retrieval of images by unsupervised learning (CLUE), for improving user interaction with image retrieval systems by fully exploiting the similarity information. CLUE retrieves image clusters by applying a graph-theoretic clustering algorithm to a collection of images in the vicinity of the query. Clustering in CLUE is dynamic. In particular, clusters formed depend on which images are retrieved in response to the query. CLUE can be combined with any real-valued symmetric similarity measure (metric or nonmetric). Thus, it may be embedded in many current CBIR systems, including relevance feedback systems. The performance of an experimental image retrieval system using CLUE is evaluated on a database of around 60,000 images from COREL. Empirical results demonstrate improved performance compared with a CBIR system using the same image similarity measure. In addition, results on images returned by Google's Image Search reveal the potential of applying CLUE to real-world image data and integrating CLUE as a part of the interface for keyword-based image retrieval systems.     

A shape-based image retrieval method using salient edges

Content-based image retrieval is emerging as an important research area with applications in digital libraries and multimedia databases. In this paper, we present a novel five-stage image retrieval method based on salient edges. In the first stage, the Canny operator is performed to detect edge points. Then, the Water-Filling algorithm is employed to extract edge curves. In the third stage, salient edges are selected and the shape features in terms of the salient edges are yielded. In the fourth stage, a similarity measure, namely the integrated salient edge matching, that integrates properties of all the salient edges, is introduced, and used to compare the similarity of the query image with the images in the database. Finally, the best matches are returned in similarity order. The presented approach is easy to implement and can be efficiently applied to retrieve images with clear edges. Preliminary experimental results on a database containing 6500 images are very promising.     

Indexing and retrieval of images by spatial constraints

Many multimedia applications require retrieval of spatially similar images against a given query image. Existing work on image retrieval and indexing either requires extensive low-level computations or elaborate human interaction. In this paper, we introduce a new symbolic image representation technique to eliminate repetitive tasks of image understanding and object processing. Our symbolic image representation scheme is based on the concept of hierarchical decomposition of image space into spatial arrangements of features while preserving the spatial relationships among the image objects. Quadtrees are used to manage the decomposition hierarchy and play an important role in defining the similarity measure. This scheme is incremental in nature, can be adopted to accommodate varying levels of details in a wide range of application domains, and provides geometric variance independence. While ensuring that there are no false negatives, our approach also discriminates against non-matching entities by eliminating them as soon as possible, during the coarser matching phases. A hierarchical indexing scheme based on the concept of image signatures and efficient quadtree matching has been devised. Each level of the hierarchy tends to reduce the search space, allowing more involved comparisons only for potentially matching candidate database images. For a given query image, a facility is provided to rank-order the retrieved spatially similar images from the image database for subsequent browsing and selection by the user.     

Perceptual Image Indexing and Retrieval

We describe a perceptual approach to generating features for use in indexing and retrieving images from an image database. Salient regions that immediately attract the eye are large color regions that usually dominate an image. Features derived from these will allow search for images that are similar perceptually. We compute color features and Gabor color texture features on regions obtained from a multiscale representation of the image, generated by a multiband smoothing algorithm based on human psychophysical measurements of color appearance. The combined feature vector is then used for indexing all salient regions of an image. For retrieval, those images are selected that contain more similar regions to the query image by using a multipass retrieval and ranking mechanism. Matches are found using the L₂ metric. The results demonstrate that the proposed method performs very well.     

A CBIR system based on saliency driven local image features and multi orientation texture features

In Content-based Image Retrieval (CBIR), the user provides the query image in which only a selective portion of the image carries the foremost vital information known as the object region of the image. However, the human visual system also focuses on a particular salient region of an image to instinctively understand its semantic meaning. Therefore, the human visual attention technique can be well imposed in the CBIR scheme. Inspired by these facts, we initially utilized the signature saliency map-based approach to decompose the image into its respective main object region (ObR) and non-object region (NObR). ObR possesses most of the vital image information, so block-level normalized singular value decomposition (SVD) has been used to extract salient features of the ObR. In most natural images, NObR plays a significant role in understanding the actual semantic meaning of the image. Accordingly, multi-directional texture features have been extracted from NObR using Gabor filter on different wavelengths. Since the importance of ObR and NObR features are not equal, a new homogeneity-based similarity matching approach has been devised to enhance retrieval accuracy. Finally, we have demonstrated retrieval performances using both the combined and distinct ObR and NObR features on seven standard coral, texture, object, and heterogeneous datasets. The experimental outcomes show that the proposed CBIR system has a promising retrieval efficiency and outperforms various existing systems substantially.     

融合多特征的图像检索算法

针对单一特征不能很好地表述图像的问题,提出了一种融合多特征的图像检索算法.首先,提取查询图像和图像库中样本图像的GIST(Generalized Search Tree)特征,用欧氏距离衡量图像间的GIST相似度值,根据查询图像的GIST特征在图像库中进行检索,将结果按相似度进行排序;然后,提取查询图像和返回结果中前k幅图像的尺度不变特征变换(SIFT)特征,使用BBF(Best Bin First)算法进行特征匹配;最后,通过特征点匹配点对数排序并返回检索结果.实验在改进的Corel1000数据集上进行,与传统的单特征图像检索算法对比,提出的图像检索算法不仅提高了检索准确率,而且获得了较好的检索效率.     

基于三元采样图卷积网络的半监督遥感图像检索

该文提出了一种基于三元采样图卷积网络的度量学习方法,以实现遥感图像的半监督检索。所提方法由三元图卷积网络(TGCN)和基于图的三元组采样(GTS)两部分组成。TGCN由3个具有共享权重的并行卷积神经网络和图卷积网络组成,用以提取图像的初始特征以及学习图像的图嵌入。通过同时学习图像特征以及图嵌入,TGCN能够得到用于半监督图像检索的有效图结构。接着,通过提出的GTS算法对图结构内隐含的图像相似性信息进行评价,以选择合适的困难三元组(Hard Triplet),并利用困难三元组组成的样本集合对模型进行有效快速的模型训练。通过TGCN和GTS的组合,提出的度量学习方法在两个遥感数据集上进行了测试。实验结果表明,TGCN-GTS具有以下两方面的优越性：TGCN能够根据图像及图结构学习到有效的图嵌入特征及度量空间;GTS有效评估图结构内隐含的图像相似性信息选择合适的困难三元组,显著提升了半监督遥感图像检索效果。     

基于Zernike矩与SIFT特征的商标检索算法

为降低商标检索算法的误检率,提出一种结合Zernike矩(ZM)和尺度不变特征变换(SIFT)的商标检索算法,该算法由离线数据库构建和在线检索组成。分别从查询图像中提取ZM和SIFT特征;根据查询图像的特征集与数据库中存储的图像的特征集之间的ZM特征进行相似度度量,形成候选商标集;最后,利用SIFT特征对查询图像与候选图像精准检测,对相似距离进行排序,将结果返回给用户。实验结果表明：与当前流行的商标检索算法相比,该算法具备更好的检索性能,在缩放、平移、模糊、透视、斜切、扭曲等变换干扰下,仍呈现出更理想的Precision- Recall曲线以及F值。     

Efficient privacy-preserving image retrieval scheme over outsourced data with multi-user

The traditional privacy-preserving image retrieval schemes not only bring large computational and communication overhead,but also cannot protect the image and query privacy in multi-user scenarios.To solve above problems,an efficient privacy-preserving content-based image retrieval scheme was proposed in multi-user scenarios.The scheme used Euclidean distance comparison technique to rank the pictures according to similarity of picture feature vectors and return top-k returned.Meanwhile,the efficient key conversion protocol designed in proposed image retrieval scheme allowed each search user to generate queries based on his own private key so that he can retrieval encrypted images generated by different data owners.Strict security analysis shows that the user privacy and cloud data security can be well protected during the image retrieval process,and the performance analysis using real-world dataset shows that the proposed image retrieval scheme is efficient and feasible in practical applications.     

Content-based image retrieval using local visual attention feature

Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) has been an active research topic in the last decade. As one of the promising approaches, salient point based image retrieval has attracted many researchers. However, the related work is usually very time consuming, and some salient points always may not represent the most interesting subset of points for image indexing. Based on fast and performant salient point detector, and the salient point expansion, a novel content-based image retrieval using local visual attention feature is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the salient image points are extracted by using the fast and performant SURF (Speeded-Up Robust Features) detector. Then, the visually significant image points around salient points can be obtained according to the salient point expansion. Finally, the local visual attention feature of visually significant image points, including the weighted color histogram and spatial distribution entropy, are extracted, and the similarity between color images is computed by using the local visual attention feature. Experimental results, including comparisons with the state-of-the-art retrieval systems, demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposal.     

Boosting image object retrieval and indexing by automatically discovered pseudo-objects

State-of-the-art object retrieval systems are mostly based on the bag-of-visual-words representation which encodes local appearance information of an image in a feature vector. An image object search is performed by comparing query object’s feature vector with those for database images. However, a database image vector generally carries mixed information of the entire image which may contain multiple objects and background. Search quality is degraded by such noisy (or diluted) feature vectors. To tackle this problem, we propose a novel representation, pseudo-objects – a subset of proximate feature points with its own feature vector to represent a local area, to approximate candidate objects in database images. In this paper, we investigate effective methods (e.g., grid, G-means, and GMM–BIC) to estimate pseudo-objects. Additionally, we also confirm that the pseudo-objects can significantly benefit inverted-file indexing both in accuracy and efficiency. Experimenting over two consumer photo benchmarks, we demonstrate that the proposed method significantly outperforms other state-of-the-art object retrieval and indexing algorithms.     

红外图像显著目标检测算法

提出一种简单快速的红外图像显著目标检测算法,算法可以分为三步:首先,对原始红外图像进行预处理以增强目标与背景的对比度;然后,在log频谱中提取预处理后图像的频谱残差,通过相应的反变换及简单的阈值分割,可以得到显著目标的大致区域;最后,采用一个滑动窗口在目标候选区域内进行搜索确定显著目标的准确位置,这个过程采用由目标及其周围区域在原始图像中的灰度分布得到的半局部特征对比度的概率表达得到每个像素点的显著性值,进行阈值分割得到显著目标,改变滑动窗口的大小可以检测出不同尺度的目标。采用大量的红外图像对算法进行测试,实验结果表明该算法具有高效性和鲁棒性。     

Design and analysis of a content-based pathology image retrieval system

A prototype, content-based image retrieval system has been built employing a client/server architecture to access supercomputing power from the physician's desktop. The system retrieves images and their associated annotations from a networked microscopic pathology image database based on content similarity to user supplied query images. Similarity is evaluated based on four image feature types: color histogram, image texture, Fourier coefficients, and wavelet coefficients, using the vector dot product as a distance metric. Current retrieval accuracy varies across pathological categories depending on the number of available training samples and the effectiveness of the feature set. The distance measure of the search algorithm was validated by agglomerative cluster analysis in light of the medical domain knowledge. Results show a correlation between pathological significance and the image document distance value generated by the computer algorithm. This correlation agrees with observed visual similarity. This validation method has an advantage over traditional statistical evaluation methods when sample size is small and where domain knowledge is important. A multi-dimensional scaling analysis shows a low dimensionality nature of the embedded space for the current test set.     

Fast segmentation of porcelain images based on texture features

This study aims to segment objects within images of porcelain artifacts to help users retrieve the images in an efficient and convenient manner. Through digital archiving, a tremendous number of porcelain images have been created. To avoid interference due to the image’s background during the retrieval process, it is necessary to segment objects in advance to accommodate high-precision image retrieval. In the proposed segmentation process, four texture features, including coarseness, contrast, directionality, and gradient, are first obtained. The morphological processing, which involves PCA (principal component analysis), Otsu’s method, and object filter for opening and closing operation, is applied. Finally, regarding the objects selected by object filter, boundary extraction and watershed segmentation are performed to segment the porcelain objects from the background. In our image segmentation experiment using images of Chinese porcelain from various dynasties, featuring various shapes and colors, complete and accurate segmentation results are produced. The results can be used as a reference for future identification of the era to which the artifacts belong, and also to lay a foundation for future development of porcelain image retrieval techniques as a benefit to academic research.     

Co-transduction for shape retrieval

In this paper, we propose a new shape/object retrieval algorithm, namely, co-transduction. The performance of a retrieval system is critically decided by the accuracy of adopted similarity measures (distances or metrics). In shape/object retrieval, ideally, intraclass objects should have smaller distances than interclass objects. However, it is a difficult task to design an ideal metric to account for the large intraclass variation. Different types of measures may focus on different aspects of the objects: for example, measures computed based on contours and skeletons are often complementary to each other. Our goal is to develop an algorithm to fuse different similarity measures for robust shape retrieval through a semisupervised learning framework. We name our method co-transduction, which is inspired by the co-training algorithm. Given two similarity measures and a query shape, the algorithm iteratively retrieves the most similar shapes using one measure and assigns them to a pool for the other measure to do a re-ranking, and vice versa. Using co-transduction, we achieved an improved result of 97.72% (bull's-eye measure) on the MPEG-7 data set over the state-of-the-art performance. We also present an algorithm called tri-transduction to fuse multiple-input similarities, and it achieved 99.06% on the MPEG-7 data set. Our algorithm is general, and it can be directly applied on input similarity measures/metrics; it is not limited to object shape retrieval and can be applied to other tasks for ranking/retrieval.     

Multi-object image retrieval based on shape and topology

We aim at developing a geometry-based retrieval system for multi-object images. We model both shape and topology of image objects including holes using a structured representation called curvature tree (CT); the hierarchy of the CT reflects the inclusion relationships between the objects and holes. To facilitate shape-based matching, triangle-area representation (TAR) of each object and hole is stored at the corresponding node in the CT. The similarity between two multi-object images is measured based on the maximum similarity subtree isomorphism (MSSI) between their CTs. For this purpose, we adapt a continuous optimization approach to solve the MSSI problem and a very effective dynamic programming algorithm to measure the similarity between the attributed nodes. Our matching scheme agrees with many recent findings in psychology about the human perception of multi-object images. Experiments on a database of 1500 logos and the MPEG-7 CE-1 database of 1400 shape images have shown the significance of the proposed method.     

基于嵌入式零树小波编码直方图图像检索

图像和视频应用的快速增长，使得根据图像和视频内容进行查询的技术变得越来越重要，人们提出了许多基于像素域或压缩域的图像检索技术，因为多媒体数据库通常具有相当大的数据量，所以基于像素域图像检索技术的计算复杂度相当大，因此，许多文献提出更快的基于压缩域的图像检索技术，本文提出一种改进的基于嵌入式零树小波编码直方图的图像检索技术，特征提取综合考虑图像的颜色，纹理，频率和空间信息，所有的特征可以在压缩过程中自动得到，图像检索的过程就是匹配待检索图像和来自数据库的侯选图像的索引，实验证明这种方法具有好的检索性能。