Colour Image Indexing Using SOM for Region-of-Interest Retrieval

In this paper, we present a novel approach to image indexing by incorporating a neural network model, Kohonen’s Self-Organising Map (SOM), for content-based image retrieval. The motivation stems from the idea of finding images by regarding users’ specifications or requirements imposed on the query, which has been ignored in most existing image retrieval systems. An important and unique aspect of our interactive scheme is to allow the user to select a Region-Of-Interest (ROI) from the sample image, and subsequent query concentrates on matching the regional colour features to find images containing similar regions as indicated by the user. The SOM algorithm is capable of adaptively partitioning each image into several homogeneous regions for representing and indexing the image. This is achieved by unsupervised clustering and classification of pixel-level features, called Local Neighbourhood Histograms (LNH), without a priori knowledge about the data distribution in the feature space. The indexes generated from the resultant prototypes of SOM learning demonstrate fairly good performance over an experimental image database, and therefore suggest the effectiveness and significant potential of our proposed indexing and retrieval strategy for application to content-based image retrieval. Receiveed: 4 June 1998?,Received in revised form: 7 January 1999?Accepted: 7 January 1999     

一种高效的图像数据库检索方法

对于大型图像库,如何高效地检索出相似图像是图像检索系统的一大挑战。提出了一种改进的K-均值聚类算法建立分层结构的索引,再利用A*树算法和三角不等式原则及N近邻方法对索引库快速高效地搜索,达到对图像库快速高效检索相似图像的目的。实验在Corel图像库上进行,实验结果表明该方法以对数时间复杂度实现基于内容的高效检索。     

Web-based image indexing and retrieval in JPEG compressed domain

As the majority of content-based image retrieval systems operate on full images in pixel domain, decompression is a prerequisite for the retrieval of compressed images. To provide a possible on-line indexing and retrieval technique for those jpg image files, we propose a novel pseudo-pixel extraction algorithm to bridge the gap between the existing image indexing technology, developed in the pixel domain, and the fact that an increasing number of images stored on the Web are already compressed by JPEG at the source. Further, we describe our Web-based image retrieval system, WEBimager, by using the proposed algorithm to provide a prototype visual information system toward automatic management, indexing, and retrieval of compressed images available on the Internet. This provides users with efficient tools to search the Web for compressed images and establish a database or a collection of special images to their interests. Experiments using texture- and colour-based indexing techniques support the idea that the proposed algorithm achieves significantly better results in terms of computing cost than their full decompression or partial decompression counterparts. This technology will help control the explosion of media-rich content by offering users a powerful automated image indexing and retrieval tool for compressed images on the Web.J. Jiang: Contacting author     

A novel evolutionary approach for optimizing content-based image indexing algorithms.

Optimization of content-based image indexing and retrieval (CBIR) algorithms is a complicated and time-consuming task since each time a parameter of the indexing algorithm is changed, all images in the database should be indexed again. In this paper, a novel evolutionary method called evolutionary group algorithm (EGA) is proposed for complicated time-consuming optimization problems such as finding optimal parameters of content-based image indexing algorithms. In the new evolutionary algorithm, the image database is partitioned into several smaller subsets, and each subset is used by an updating process as training patterns for each chromosome during evolution. This is in contrast to genetic algorithms that use the whole database as training patterns for evolution. Additionally, for each chromosome, a parameter called age is defined that implies the progress of the updating process. Similarly, the genes of the proposed chromosomes are divided into two categories: evolutionary genes that participate to evolution and history genes that save previous states of the updating process. Furthermore, a new fitness function is defined which evaluates the fitness of the chromosomes of the current population with different ages in each generation. We used EGA to optimize the quantization thresholds of the wavelet-correlogram algorithm for CBIR. The optimal quantization thresholds computed by EGA improved significantly all the evaluation measures including average precision, average weighted precision, average recall, and average rank for the wavelet-correlogram method.     

多媒体数据库索引技术的研究与实现

现有的数据库索引技术,普遍不能适应多维空间属性的搜索,特别是无法对大容量的多媒体数据进行基于内容的检索。文章分析研究了多媒体数据库的索引结构和索引算法,设计了一种用于大容量图像数据库的索引方法。实验在1万多幅的图像库上反复进行,结论证明该算法能够有效地支持大容量图像库的基于内容检索。     

基于Boosting学习的图片自动语义标注

图片自动语义标注是基于内容图像检索中很重要且很有挑战性的工作。本文提出了一种基于Boosting学习的图片自动语义标注方法，建立了一个图片语义标注系统BLIR（boosting for linguistic indexing image retrievalsystem）。假设一组具有同一语义的图像能够用一个由一组特征组合而成的视觉模型来表示。2D-MHMM（2维多分辨率隐马尔科夫模型）实际上就是一种颜色和纹理特殊组合的模板。BLIR系统首先生成大量的2D-MHMM模型，然后用Boosting算法来实现关键词与2D-MHMM模型的关联。在一个包含60000张图像的图库上实现并测试了这个系统。结果表明，对这些测试图像，BLIR方法比其他方法具有更高的检索正确率。     

基于聚类的图像检索

如何构建有效的组织和索引、提高图像检索速度是基于内容的图像检索所需解决的关键问题之一。论文采用了一种基于改进的模糊C均值算法的聚类索引。实验表明:该方法应用于图像检索,在准确性和实时性方面均能达到较好的效果,并优于已有的模糊C均值聚类算法。另外,系统实现了基于多特征结合的方法进行检索,并利用基于相关反馈的权重调整方法进一步提高检索性能,使检索结果更加符合用户的视觉效果。     

基于小波分析和Oracle8i的图像数据库系统设计

采用了小波分析以及小波零树编码技术来提取图像特征,在Oracle8i支持图像数据库查询的基础上,综合使用传统的数据库检索技术和初步走向应用的基于内容的查询技术,实验证明这种方法丰富了传统的关系型数据库的功能,并具有良好的检索性能。     

Visual information retrieval system via content-based approach

In this paper a content-based image retrieval method that can search large image databases efficiently by color, texture, and shape content is proposed. Quantized RGB histograms and the dominant triple (hue, saturation, and value), which are extracted from quantized HSV joint histogram in the local image region, are used for representing global/local color information in the image. Entropy and maximum entry from co-occurrence matrices are used for texture information and edge angle histogram is used for representing shape information. Relevance feedback approach, which has coupled proposed features, is used for obtaining better retrieval accuracy. A new indexing method that supports fast retrieval in large image databases is also presented. Tree structures constructed by k-means algorithm, along with the idea of triangle inequality, eliminate candidate images for similarity calculation between query image and each database image. We find that the proposed method reduces calculation up to average 92.2 percent of the images from direct comparison.     

Low-cost image indexing for massive database

According to the trend in the modern society that utilizes various image related services and products, the amount of images created by diverse personal and industrial devices is immeasurably voluminous. The adoption of very uncommon or unique identifiers or index attributes with admissible storage requirement and adequate data representation enables massive image databases to process demanded operations effectively and efficiently. For the last decades, various content-based image retrieval techniques have been studied and contributed to support indexing in large digital image databases. However, the complexity, high processing cost of the content-based image retrieval techniques might create inefficiency regarding the configuration of a high-performance image database even though satisfying their own objectives. Moreover the indexing methods with the property of low cardinality might need additional indexing in order to provide strong uniqueness. In this paper, we present identifier generation methods for indexing which are efficient and effective in the perspective of cost and indexing performance as well. The proposed methods exploit the distribution of line segments and luminance areas in an image in order to compose identifiers with high cardinality. From the experimental evaluation, we’ve learned that our approaches are effective and efficient regarding processing time, storage requirement and indexing performance.     

Wavelet correlogram: A new approach for image indexing and retrieval

In this paper, a new algorithm for content-based image indexing and retrieval is presented. The proposed method is based on a combination of multiresolution image decomposition and color correlation histogram. According to the new algorithm, wavelet coefficients of the image are computed first using a directional wavelet transform such as Gabor wavelets. A quantization step is then applied before computing one-directional autocorrelograms of the wavelet coefficients. Finally, index vectors are constructed using these one-directional wavelet correlograms. The retrieval results obtained by application of our new method on a 1000 image database demonstrated a significant improvement in effectiveness and efficiency compared to the indexing and retrieval methods based on image color correlogram or wavelet transform.     

Scalable color image indexing and retrieval using vector wavelets

This paper presents a scalable content-based image indexing and retrieval system based on vector wavelet coefficients of color images. Highly decorrelated wavelet coefficient planes are used to acquire a search efficient feature space. The feature space is subsequently indexed using properties of all the images in the database. Therefore, the feature key of an image not only corresponds to the content of the image itself but also to how much the image is different from the other images being stored in the database. The search time linearly depends on the number of images similar to the query image and is independent of the database size. We show that, in a database of 5,000 images, query search takes less than 30 msec on a 266 MHz Pentium II processor, compared to several seconds of retrieval time in the earlier systems proposed in the literature     

Expert system for color image retrieval

Recently, as Web and various databases contain a large number of images, content-based image retrieval (CBIR) applications are greatly needed. This paper proposes a new image retrieval system using color-spatial information from those applications.First, this paper suggests two kinds of indexing keys to prune away irrelevant images to a given query image: major colors' set (MCS) signature related with color information and distribution block signature (DBS) related with spatial information. After successively applying these filters to a large database, we get only small amount of high potential candidates that are somewhat similar to a query image. Then we make use of the quad modeling (QM) method to set the initial weights of two-dimensional cell in a query image according to each major color. Finally, we retrieve more similar images from the database by comparing a query image with candidate images through a similarity measuring function associated with the weights. In that procedure, we use a new relevance feedback mechanism. This feedback enhances the retrieval effectiveness by dynamically modulating the weights of color-spatial information. Experiments show that the proposed system is not only efficient but also effective.     

Probability based document clustering and image clustering using content-based image retrieval

Clustering of related or similar objects has long been regarded as a potentially useful contribution of helping users to navigate an information space such as a document collection. Many clustering algorithms and techniques have been developed and implemented but as the sizes of document collections have grown these techniques have not been scaled to large collections because of their computational overhead. To solve this problem, the proposed system concentrates on an interactive text clustering methodology, probability based topic oriented and semi-supervised document clustering. Recently, as web and various documents contain both text and large number of images, the proposed system concentrates on content-based image retrieval (CBIR) for image clustering to give additional effect to the document clustering approach. It suggests two kinds of indexing keys, major colour sets (MCS) and distribution block signature (DBS) to prune away the irrelevant images to given query image. Major colour sets are related with colour information while distribution block signatures are related with spatial information. After successively applying these filters to a large database, only small amount of high potential candidates that are somewhat similar to that of query image are identified. Then, the system uses quad modelling method (QM) to set the initial weight of two-dimensional cells in query image according to each major colour and retrieve more similar images through similarity association function associated with the weights. The proposed system evaluates the system efficiency by implementing and testing the clustering results with Dbscan and K-means clustering algorithms. Experiment shows that the proposed document clustering algorithm performs with an average efficiency of 94.4% for various document categories.     

基于空间特征的图像检索

提出一种新的基于空间特征的图像特征描述子SCH,利用基于颜色向量角和欧几里得距离的MCVAE算法共同检测原始彩色图像边缘,同时利用一种新的“最大最小分量颜色不变量模型”对原始图像量化,对边缘像素建立边缘相关矩阵;对非边缘像素使用颜色直方图描述局部颜色分布信息;然后,利用新的sin相似性度量法则衡量图像特征间的相似度。实验采用VC++6.0开发了基于内容的图像检索原型系统“SttImageRetrieval”,基于Oracle 9i数据库建立了一个综合型图像数据库“IMAGEDB”。实验分析结果证明,利用SCH描述子的检索准确度明显高于仅基于颜色统计特征的检索结果。     

A real-time matching system for large fingerprint databases

With the current rapid growth in multimedia technology, there is an imminent need for efficient techniques to search and query large image databases. Because of their unique and peculiar needs, image databases cannot be treated in a similar fashion to other types of digital libraries. The contextual dependencies present in images, and the complex nature of two-dimensional image data make the representation issues more difficult for image databases. An invariant representation of an image is still an open research issue. For these reasons, it is difficult to find a universal content-based retrieval technique. Current approaches based on shape, texture, and color for indexing image databases have met with limited success. Further, these techniques have not been adequately tested in the presence of noise and distortions. A given application domain offers stronger constraints for improving the retrieval performance. Fingerprint databases are characterized by their large size as well as noisy and distorted query images. Distortions are very common in fingerprint images due to elasticity of the skin. In this paper, a method of indexing large fingerprint image databases is presented. The approach integrates a number of domain-specific high-level features such as pattern class and ridge density at higher levels of the search. At the lowest level, it incorporates elastic structural feature-based matching for indexing the database. With a multilevel indexing approach, we have been able to reduce the search space. The search engine has also been implemented on Splash 2-a field programmable gate array (FPGA)-based array processor to obtain near-ASIC level speed of matching. Our approach has been tested on a locally collected test data and on NIST-9, a large fingerprint database available in the public domain     

Content-based indexing of multimedia databases

Content-based retrieval of multimedia database calls for content-based indexing techniques. Different from conventional databases, where data items are represented by a set of attributes of elementary data types, multimedia objects in multimedia databases are represented by a collection of features; similarity of object contents depends on context and frame of reference; and features of objects are characterized by multimodal feature measures. These lead to great challenges for content-based indexing. On the other hand, there are special requirements on content-based indexing: to support visual browsing, similarity retrieval, and fuzzy retrieval, nodes of the index should represent certain meaningful categories. That is to say that certain semantics must be added when performing indexing. ContIndex, the context-based indexing technique presented in this paper, is proposed to meet these challenges and special requirements. The indexing tree is formally defined by adapting a classification-tree concept. Horizontal links among nodes in the same level enhance the flexibility of the index. A special neural-network model, called Learning based on Experiences and Perspectives (FEP), has been developed to create node categories by fusing multimodal feature measures. It brings into the index the capability of self-organizing nodes with respect to certain context and frames of reference. An icon image is generated for each intermediate node to facilitate visual browsing. Algorithms have been developed to support multimedia object archival and retrieval using Contlndex     

基于内容的多媒体数据库管理系统的研究

通过分析数据库的数据模型,研究基于内容的多媒体数据库管理系统的构建方法及其功能框架,采用PL／SO．L方式访问Oracle8i数据库。为了提高管理系统的图像检索速度,提出了一种基于内容的图像检索算法,从聚类中心初值选取和分类中心的更新方面改进C-均值聚类算法,较好地解决了图像的分类问题。实验表明：使用该聚类检索算法,能对分类中心进行快速更新,有效地对图像进行聚类以及缩短检索时间,检索性能优于现有的C-均值聚类算法。