Analyzing scenery images by monotonic tree

Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) has been an active research area in the last ten years, and a variety of techniques have been developed. However, retrieving images on the basis of low-level features has proven unsatisfactory, and new techniques are needed to support high-level queries. Research efforts are needed to bridge the gap between high-level semantics and low-level features. In this paper, we present a novel approach to support semantics-based image retrieval. Our approach is based on the monotonic tree, a derivation of the contour tree for use with discrete data. The structural elements of an image are modeled as branches (or subtrees) of the monotonic tree. These structural elements are classified and clustered on the basis of such properties as color, spatial location, harshness and shape. Each cluster corresponds to some semantic feature. This scheme is applied to the analysis and retrieval of scenery images. Comparisons of experimental results of this approach with conventional techniques using low-level features demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.     

SemQuery: semantic clustering and querying on heterogeneous features for visual data

The effectiveness of content-based image retrieval can be enhanced using heterogeneous features embedded in the images. However, since the features in texture, color, and shape are generated using different computation methods and thus may require different similarity measurements, the integration of the retrievals on heterogeneous features is a nontrivial task. We present a semantics-based clustering and indexing approach, termed SemQuery, to support visual queries on heterogeneous features of images. Using this approach, the database images are classified based on their heterogeneous features. Each semantic image cluster contains a set of subclusters that are represented by the heterogeneous features that the images contain. An image is included in a semantic cluster if it falls within the scope of all the heterogeneous clusters of the semantic cluster. We also design a neural network model to merge the results of basic queries on individual features. A query processing strategy is then presented to support visual queries on heterogeneous features. An experimental analysis is conducted and presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach.     

基于语义测度的图像相似性计算研究

针对图像检索中的低层视觉特征相似性度量问题,提出一种基于语义测度的图像相似性计算方法。该方法在图像区域分割的基础上,通过构建图像区域子块与语义元数据之间的统计映射关系,实现图像内容的统计语义描述,建立图像之间、图像与语义类别、语义类别之间的分层语义相似测度。通过对自然图像库的实验结果表明,该方法在相似图像检索中具有更好的性能。     

基于GIS语义的遥感图像检索

语义图像检索为填补图像低层视觉特征和用户高层语义之间的鸿沟而产生,图像语义描述和提取是其关键。提出了一种基于G IS语义的遥感图像检索(G IS sem antics-based remote sensing im age retrieval,简称G ISSB IR)方法,主要涉及空间对象的语义表达和语义匹配两方面内容。利用面向对象G IS语义模型和概念语义网络共同表达空间对象的语义,设计了语义调解器处理用户与系统之间的语义不一致。通过对G IS原子查询结果进行布尔运算得到矢量查询结果,在此基础上得到与G IS数据具有统一坐标框架的遥感图像检索结果。实验结果表明G ISSB IR方法是有效的。     

基于文本与语义相关性分析的图像检索

为了更加有效地检索到符合用户复杂语义需求的图像，提出一种基于文本描述与语义相关性分析的图像检索算法。该方法将图像检索分为两步：基于文本语义相关性分析的图像检索和基于SIFT特征的相似图像扩展检索。根据自然语言处理技术分析得到用户文本需求中的关键词及其语义关联，在选定图像库中通过语义相关性分析得到“种子”图像；接下来在图像扩展检索中，采用基于SIFT特征的相似图像检索，利用之前得到的“种子”图像作为查询条件，在网络图像库中进行扩展检索，并在结果集上根据两次检索的图像相似度进行排序输出，最终得到更加丰富有效的图像检索结果。为了证明算法的有效性，在标准数据集Corel5K和网络数据集Deriantart8K上完成了多组实验，实验结果证明该方法能够得到较为精确地符合用户语义要求的图像检索结果，并且通过扩展算法可以得到更加丰富的检索结果。     

部件检测和语义网络的细粒度鞋类图像检索

目的 细粒度图像检索是当前细粒度图像分析和视觉领域的热点问题。以鞋类图像为例,传统方法仅提取其粗粒度特征且缺少关键的语义属性,难以区分部件间的细微差异,不能有效用于细粒度检索。针对鞋类图像检索大多基于简单款式导致检索效率不高的问题,提出一种结合部件检测和语义网络的细粒度鞋类图像检索方法。方法 结合标注后的鞋类图像训练集对输入的待检鞋类图像进行部件检测;基于部件检测后的鞋类图像和定义的语义属性训练语义网络,以提取待检图像和训练图像的特征向量,并采用主成分分析进行降维;通过对鞋类图像训练集中每个候选图像与待检图像间的特征向量进行度量学习,按其匹配度高低顺序输出检索结果。结果 实验在UT-Zap50K数据集上与目前检索效果较好的4种方法进行比较,检索精度提高近6%。同时,与同任务的SHOE-CNN（semantic hierarchy of attribute convolutional neural network）检索方法比较,本文具有更高的检索准确率。结论 针对传统图像特征缺少细微的视觉描述导致鞋类图像检索准确率低的问题,提出一种细粒度鞋类图像检索方法,既提高了鞋类图像检索的精度和准确率,又能较好地满足实际应用需求。     

Relevance Feedback and Learning in Content-Based Image Search

A major bottleneck in content-based image retrieval (CBIR) systems or search engines is the large gap between low-level image features used to index images and high-level semantic contents of images. One solution to this bottleneck is to apply relevance feedback to refine the query or similarity measures in image search process. In this paper, we first address the key issues involved in relevance feedback of CBIR systems and present a brief overview of a set of commonly used relevance feedback algorithms. Almost all of the previously proposed methods fall well into such framework. We present a framework of relevance feedback and semantic learning in CBIR. In this framework, low-level features and keyword annotations are integrated in image retrieval and in feedback processes to improve the retrieval performance. We have also extended framework to a content-based web image search engine in which hosting web pages are used to collect relevant annotations for images and users' feedback logs are used to refine annotations. A prototype system has developed to evaluate our proposed schemes, and our experimental results indicated that our approach outperforms traditional CBIR system and relevance feedback approaches.     

一种基于视觉单词的图像检索方法

基于内容的图像检索技术最主要的问题是图像的低层特征和高层语义之间存在着"语义鸿沟"。受文本内容分析的启发,有研究学者借鉴传统词典中用文本单词组合解释术语的思路,将图像视为视觉单词的组合,利用一系列视觉单词的组合来描述图像的语义内容。为此,利用SIFT进行图像的视觉单词特征提取,然后构建视觉单词库,最后实现了一个基于视觉单词的图像检索系统。实验结果表明,该方法在一定程度上提高了图像检索的查准率。     

Exploring statistical correlations for image retrieval

Bridging the cognitive gap in image retrieval has been an active research direction in recent years, of which a key challenge is to get enough training data to learn the mapping functions from low-level feature spaces to high-level semantics. In this paper, image regions are classified into two types: key regions representing the main semantic contents and environmental regions representing the contexts. We attempt to leverage the correlations between types of regions to improve the performance of image retrieval. A Context Expansion approach is explored to take advantages of such correlations by expanding the key regions of the queries using highly correlated environmental regions according to an image thesaurus. The thesaurus serves as both a mapping function between image low-level features and concepts and a store of the statistical correlations between different concepts. It is constructed through a data-driven approach which uses Web data (images, their surrounding textual annotations) as training data source to learn the region concepts and to explore the statistical correlations. Experimental results on a database of 10,000 general-purpose images show the effectiveness of our proposed approach in both improving search precision (i.e. filter irrelevant images) and recall (i.e. retrieval relevant images whose context may be varied). Several major factors which have impact on the performance of our approach are also studied.     

一种基于图像高层语义信息的图像检索方法

由于基于图像高层语义信息的图像检索与传统的图像特征匹配检索相比，在检索的准确性、结果相关性以及降低误检率等方面具有明显的优势，因此高效的图像检索方法应该充分利用图像蕴涵的高层语义信息。为了利用图像的高层语义信息来进行图像检索，在深入研究图像高层语义的低层特征描述的基础上，提出了图像语义的层次划分，并对每个高层语义层提出了语义抽取和检索算法。实验结果表明，该检索算法可以有效地对图像高层语义信息进行提取，并可作为新型高效图像检索系统的一个模型。     

Web image retrieval using majority-based ranking approach

Web image retrieval has characteristics different from typical content-based image retrieval; web images have associated textual cues. However, a web image retrieval system often yields undesirable results, because it uses limited text information such as surrounding text, URLs, and image filenames. In this paper, we propose a new approach to retrieval, which uses the image content of retrieved results without relying on assistance from the user. Our basic hypothesis is that more popular images have a higher probability of being the ones that the user wishes to retrieve. According to this hypothesis, we propose a retrieval approach that is based on a majority of the images under consideration. We define four methods for finding the visual features of majority of images; (1) majority-first method, (2) centroid-of-all method, (3) centroid-of-top K method, and (4) centroid-of-largest-cluster method. In addition, we implement a graph/picture classifier for improving the effectiveness of web image retrieval. We evaluate the retrieval effectiveness of both our methods and conventional ones by using precision and recall graphs. Experimental results show that the proposed methods are more effective than conventional keyword-based retrieval methods.     

基于目标区域的语义图像检索

提出了一种基于高层语义的图像检索方法,该方法首先将图像分割成区域,提取每个区域的颜色、形状、位置特征,然后使用这些特征对图像对象进行聚类,得到每幅图像的语义特征向量;采用模糊C均值算法对图像进行聚类,在图像检索时,查询图像和聚类中心比较,然后在距离最小的类中进行检索。实验表明,提出的方法可以明显提高检索效率,缩小低层特征和高层语义之间的“语义鸿沟”。     

基于多语义特征融合的图像检索

多媒体技术的发展导致数字图像迅速增长,如何根据语义特征高效检索出满足用户要求的图像,已成为当前各行业迫切需要解决的问题。为此提出一种基于颜色、纹理和形状三种语义特征的图像检索方法,建立了颜色和纹理特征的语义描述,使用BP神经网络实现了低层视觉特征到高层语义特征的映射。选取Corel图像库作为测试图像库,实验通过与基于颜色语义特征的检索方法相比较,取得了良好的实验效果。     

基于深度语义模型的乳腺X线图像检索

图像特征是基于内容的图像检索（Content-based image retrieval,CBIR）的关键,大部分使用的手工特征难以有效地表示乳腺肿块的特征,底层特征与高层语义之间存在语义鸿沟。为了提高CBIR的检索性能,本文采用深度学习来提取图像的高层语义特征。由于乳腺X线图像的深度卷积特征在空间和特征维度上存在一定的冗余和噪声,本文在词汇树和倒排文件的基础上,对深度特征的空间和语义进行优化,构建了两种不同的深度语义树。为了充分发挥深度卷积特征的识别能力,根据乳腺图像深度特征的局部特性对树节点的权重进行细化,提出了两种节点加权方法,得到了更好的检索结果。本文从乳腺X线图像数据库（Digital database for screening mammography, DDSM）中提取了2 200个感兴趣区域（Region of interest,ROIs）作为数据集,实验结果表明,该方法能够有效提高感兴趣肿块区域的检索精度和分类准确率,并且具有良好的可扩展性。     

Region-based image retrieval with high-level semantics using decision tree learning

Semantic-based image retrieval has attracted great interest in recent years. This paper proposes a region-based image retrieval system with high-level semantic learning. The key features of the system are: (1) it supports both query by keyword and query by region of interest. The system segments an image into different regions and extracts low-level features of each region. From these features, high-level concepts are obtained using a proposed decision tree-based learning algorithm named DT-ST. During retrieval, a set of images whose semantic concept matches the query is returned. Experiments on a standard real-world image database confirm that the proposed system significantly improves the retrieval performance, compared with a conventional content-based image retrieval system. (2) The proposed decision tree induction method DT-ST for image semantic learning is different from other decision tree induction algorithms in that it makes use of the semantic templates to discretize continuous-valued region features and avoids the difficult image feature discretization problem. Furthermore, it introduces a hybrid tree simplification method to handle the noise and tree fragmentation problems, thereby improving the classification performance of the tree. Experimental results indicate that DT-ST outperforms two well-established decision tree induction algorithms ID3 and C4.5 in image semantic learning.     

A survey of content-based image retrieval with high-level semantics

In order to improve the retrieval accuracy of content-based image retrieval systems, research focus has been shifted from designing sophisticated low-level feature extraction algorithms to reducing the ‘semantic gap’ between the visual features and the richness of human semantics. This paper attempts to provide a comprehensive survey of the recent technical achievements in high-level semantic-based image retrieval. Major recent publications are included in this survey covering different aspects of the research in this area, including low-level image feature extraction, similarity measurement, and deriving high-level semantic features. We identify five major categories of the state-of-the-art techniques in narrowing down the ‘semantic gap’: (1) using object ontology to define high-level concepts; (2) using machine learning methods to associate low-level features with query concepts; (3) using relevance feedback to learn users’ intention; (4) generating semantic template to support high-level image retrieval; (5) fusing the evidences from HTML text and the visual content of images for WWW image retrieval. In addition, some other related issues such as image test bed and retrieval performance evaluation are also discussed. Finally, based on existing technology and the demand from real-world applications, a few promising future research directions are suggested.     

集成视觉特征和语义信息的相关反馈方法

为了有效地利用图像检索系统的语义分类信息和视觉特征,提出一种基于Bayes的集成视觉特征和语义信息的相关反馈检索方法.首先,将图像库的数据经语义监督的视觉特征聚类算法划分为小的聚类,每个聚类内数据的视觉特征相似并且语义类别相同;然后以聚类为单位标注正负反馈的实例,这显著区别于以单个图像为单位的相关反馈过程;最后分别以基于视觉特征的Bayes分类器和基于语义的Bayes分类器修正相似距离.在图像库上的实验表明,只用较少的反馈次数就可以达到较高的检索准确率.     

基于多尺度密集网络的肺结节图像检索算法

现有基于内容的医学图像检索（CBMIR）算法存在特征提取的不足，导致图像的语义信息表达不完善、图像检索性能较差，为此提出一种多尺度密集网络算法以提高检索精度。首先，将512×512的肺结节图像降维到64×64，同时加入密集模块以解决提取的低层特征和高层语义特征之间的差距；其次，由于网络的不同层提取的肺结节图像信息不同，为了提高检索精度和效率，采用多尺度方法结合图像的全局特征和结节局部特征生成检索哈希码。实验结果分析表明，与自适应比特位的检索（ABR）算法相比，提出的算法在64位哈希码编码长度下的肺结节图像检索查准率可以达到91.17%，提高了3.5个百分点；检索一张肺切片需要平均时间为48 μs。所提算法的检索结果在表达图像丰富的语义特征和检索效率方面，优于其他对比的网络结构，适用于为医生临床辅助诊断提供依据、帮助患者有效治疗。