Word spotting for historical documents

Searching and indexing historical handwritten collections are a very challenging problem. We describe an approach called word spotting which involves grouping word images into clusters of similar words by using image matching to find similarity. By annotating “interesting” clusters, an index that links words to the locations where they occur can be built automatically. Image similarities computed using a number of different techniques including dynamic time warping are compared. The word similarities are then used for clustering using both K-means and agglomerative clustering techniques. It is shown in a subset of the George Washington collection that such a word spotting technique can outperform a Hidden Markov Model word-based recognition technique in terms of word error rates. An erratum to this article can be found at     

A structural and relational approach to handwritten wordrecognition

In this paper, we present a new off-line word recognition system that is able to recognize unconstrained handwritten words using grey-scale images. This is based on structural and relational information in the handwritten word. We use Gabor filters to extract features from the words, and then use an evidence-based approach for word classification. A solution to the Gabor filter parameter estimation problem is given, enabling the Gabor filter to be automatically tuned to the word image properties. We also developed two new methods for correcting the slope of the handwritten words. Our experiments show that the proposed method achieves good recognition rates compared to standard classification methods.     

An efficient color and texture based iris image retrieval technique

This paper proposes a hierarchical approach to retrieve an iris image efficiently from for a large iris database. This approach is a combination of both iris color and texture. Iris color is used for indexing and texture is used for retrieval of iris images from the indexed iris database. An index which is determined from the iris color is used to filter out the images that are not similar to the query image in color. Further, iris texture features of those filtered images, are used to determine the images which are similar to the query image. The iris color information helps to design an efficient indexing scheme based on color indices. The color indices are computed by averaging the intensity values of all red and blue color pixels. Kd-tree is used for real-time indexing based on color indices. The iris texture features are obtained through Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF) algorithm. These features are used to get the query’s corresponding image at the top best match. The performance of the proposed indexing scheme is compared with two well known iris indexing schemes ( [Mehrotra et al., 2010] and [Puhan and Sudha, 2008]) on UPOL (Dobeš, Machala, Tichavský, & Posp?´šil, 2004) and UBIRIS (Proencca & Alexandre, 2005) iris databases. It is observed that combination of iris color and texture improves the performance of iris recognition system.     

Deep Root Memory Optimized Indexing Methodology for Image Search Engines

Digitization has created an abundance of new information sources by altering how pictures are captured. Accessing large image databases from a web portal requires an opted indexing structure instead of reducing the contents of different kinds of databases for quick processing. This approach paves a path toward the increase of efficient image retrieval techniques and numerous research in image indexing involving large image datasets. Image retrieval usually encounters difficulties like a) merging the diverse representations of images and their Indexing, b) the low-level visual characters and semantic characters associated with an image are indirectly proportional, and c) noisy and less accurate extraction of image information (semantic and predicted attributes). This work clearly focuses and takes the base of reverse engineering and de-normalizing concept by evaluating how data can be stored effectively. Thus, retrieval becomes straightforward and rapid. This research also deals with deep root indexing with a multi-dimensional approach about how images can be indexed and provides improved results in terms of good performance in query processing and the reduction of maintenance and storage cost. We focus on the schema design on a non-clustered index solution, especially cover queries. This schema provides a filter predication to make an index with a particular content of rows and an index table called filtered indexing. Finally, we include non-key columns in addition to the key columns. Experiments on two image data sets ‘with and without’ filtered indexing show low query cost. We compare efficiency as regards accuracy in mean average precision to measure the accuracy of retrieval with the developed coherent semantic indexing. The results show that retrieval by using deep root indexing is simple and fast.     

Integrating bilingual search results for automatic junk image filtering

Keyword-based image search engines are now very popular for accessing large amounts of Web images on the Internet. Most existing keyword-based image search engines may return large amounts of junk images (which are irrelevant to the given query word), because the text terms that are loosely associated with the Web images are also used for image indexing. The objective of the proposed work is to effectively filter out the junk images from image search results. Therefore, bilingual image search results for the same keyword-based query are integrated to identify the clusters of the junk images and the clusters of the relevant images. Within relevant image clusters, the results are further refined by removing the duplications under a coarse-to-fine structure. Experiments for a large number of bilingual keyword-based queries (5,000 query words) are simultaneously performed on two keyword-based image search engines (Google Images in English and Baidu Images in Chinese), and our experimental results have shown that integrating bilingual image search results can filter out the junk images effectively.     

Word searching in unconstrained layout using character pair coding

Word searching in non-structural layout such as graphical documents is a difficult task due to arbitrary orientations of text words and the presence of graphical symbols. This paper presents an efficient approach for word searching in documents of non-structural layout using an efficient indexing and retrieval approach. The proposed indexing scheme stores spatial information of text characters of a document using a character spatial feature table (CSFT). The spatial feature of text component is derived from the neighbor component information. The character labeling of a multi-scaled and multi-oriented component is performed using support vector machines. For searching purpose, the positional information of characters is obtained from the query string by splitting it into possible combinations of character pairs. Each of these character pairs searches the position of corresponding text in document with the help of CSFT. Next, the searched text components are joined and formed into sequence by spatial information matching. String matching algorithm is performed to match the query word with the character pair sequence in documents. The experimental results are presented on two different datasets of graphical documents: maps dataset and seal/logo image dataset. The results show that the method is efficient to search query word from unconstrained document layouts of arbitrary orientation.     

Image indexing and retrieval based on vector quantization

To effectively utilize information stored in a digital image library, effective image indexing and retrieval techniques are essential. This paper proposes an image indexing and retrieval technique based on the compressed image data using vector quantization (VQ). By harnessing the characteristics of VQ, the proposed technique is able to capture the spatial relationships of pixels when indexing the image. Experimental results illustrate the robustness of the proposed technique and also show that its retrieval performance is higher compared with existing color-based techniques.     

基于反馈规则学习的医学文献主题自动标引系统

该文就中医药文献的自动标引研究,提出并开发了一个基于规则学习的主题自动标引系统。该系统从文献的题名中抽取并识别主题模式,相当有效地解决了医学科技文献的自动标引中涉及主/副题词的组配问题,并避免了基于词频处理的自动标引中存在的中文分词的障碍。开发完成的自动标引系统初期版本在大量中医药文献中进行了实验,取得了很好的结果,具备一定的实用性。     

Image and video indexing using vector quantization

Visual (image and video) database systems require efficient indexing to enable fast access to the images in a database. In addition, the large memory capacity and channel bandwidth requirements for the storage and transmission of visual data necessitate the use of compression techniques. We note that image/video indexing and compression are typically pursued independently. This reduces the storage efficiency and may degrade the system performance. In this paper, we present novel algorithms based on vector quantization (VQ) for indexing of compressed images and video. To start with, the images are compressed using VQ. In the first technique, for each codeword in the codebook, a histogram is generated and stored along with the codeword. We note that the superposition of the histograms of the codewords, which are used to represent an image, is a close approximation of the histogram of the image. This histogram is used as an index to store and retrieve the image. In the second technique, the histogram of the labels of an image is used as an index to access the image. We also propose an algorithm for indexing compressed video sequences. Here, each frame is encoded in the intraframe mode using VQ. The labels are used for the segmentation of a video sequence into shots, and for indexing the representative frame of each shot. The proposed techniques not only provide fast access to stored visual data, but also combine compression and indexing. The average retrieval rates are 95% and 94% at compression ratios of 16:1 and 64:1, respectively. The corresponding cut detection rates are 97% and 90%, respectively.     

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     

Matching 3-D Models to 2-D Images

We consider the problem of analytically characterizing the set of all 2-D images that a group of 3-D features may produce, and demonstrate that this is a useful thing to do. Our results apply for simple point features and point features with associated orientation vectors when we model projection as a 3-D to 2-D affine transformation. We show how to represent the set of images that a group of 3-D points produces with two lines (1-D subspaces), one in each of two orthogonal, high-dimensional spaces, where a single image group corresponds to one point in each space. The images of groups of oriented point features can be represented by a 2-D hyperbolic surface in a single high-dimensional space. The problem of matching an image to models is essentially reduced to the problem of matching a point to simple geometric structures. Moreover, we show that these are the simplest and lowest dimensional representations possible for these cases.We demonstrate the value of this way of approaching matching by applying our results to a variety of vision problems. In particular, we use this result to build a space-efficient indexing system that performs 3-D to 2-D matching by table lookup. This system is analytically built and accessed, accounts for the effects of sensing error, and is tested on real images. We also derive new results concerning the existence of invariants and non-accidental properties in this domain. Finally, we show that oriented points present unexpected difficulties: indexing requires fundamentally more space with oriented than with simple points, we must use more images in a motion sequence to determine the affine structure of oriented points, and the linear combinations result does not hold for oriented points.     

Trajectory estimation of a moving object using Kohonen networks

A novel approach to estimate the real-time moving trajectory of an object is proposed in this article. The objects position is obtained from the image data of a CCD camera, while a state estimator predicts the linear and angular velocities of the moving object. To overcome the uncertainties and noises residing in the input data, a Kalman filter and neural networks are utilized. Since the Kalman filter needs to approximate a nonlinear system into a linear model to estimate the states, there always exist errors as well as uncertainties again. To resolve this problem, neural networks are adopted in this approach which have high adaptability with the memory of the input–output relationship. A Kohonen network (self-organized map) is selected to learn the motion trajectory since it is spatially oriented. The superiority of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated through real experiments.This work was presented, in part, at the 9th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 28–30, 2004     

Incremental indexing with binary feature based Tversky index using black hole entropic fuzzy clustering in cloud computing

Due to the large volume of computational and storage requirements of content based image retrieval (CBIR), outsourcing image to cloud providers become an attractive research. Even though, the cloud service provides efficient indexing of the condensed images, it remains a major issue in the process of incremental indexing. Hence, an effective incremental indexing mechanism named Black Hole Entropic Fuzzy Clustering +Deep stacked incremental indexing (BHEFC+deep stacked incremental indexing) is proposed in this paper to perform incremental indexing through the retrieval of images. The images are encrypted and stored in cloud server for ensuring the security of image retrieval process. The trained images are clustered using the clustering mechanism BHEFC based on Tversky index. With the incremental indexing process, the new training images are encrypted and are converted into the decimal form such that the weight is computed using deep stacked auto-encoder that enable to update the centroid with new score values. The experimental evaluations on benchmark datasets shows that the proposed BHEFC+deep stacked incremental indexing model achieves better results compared to the existing methods by obtaining maximum accuracy of 96.728%, maximum F-measure of 83.598%, maximum precision of 84.447%, and maximum recall of 94.817%, respectively.

     

基于Lucene的XML文件相似度检索系统

经分析研究开源的Lucene系统架构以及特殊xml数据源,针对Lucene搜索得分公式的不足,提出了结合词项位置和二次检索的公式,设计一种文本搜索系统;并以提高检索性能、相似性搜索的准确率、索引的空间效率和支持查询的时间效率为目标进行实验,最后通过部署Tomcat服务器实现.经实验验证,改进的系统较之于原Lucene系统提高了建立索引效率、查询效率、准确率.     

基于方向滤波的指纹图像增强算法研究

论文在传统指纹图像增强算法的基础上,提出了一种改进的方向滤波指纹图像增强算法,算法速度得到提高,指纹图像增强效果显著。算法以方向滤波为基础,通过Sobel算子计算指纹图像的梯度和方向,根据指纹的特点设计方向滤波矩阵,由指纹局部方向选择相应方向滤波矩阵进行滤波,使指纹图像在纹线方向上得到增强,在垂直纹线方向上得到减弱,从而增加了前景和背景的对比度,消弱了噪声干扰,突出了指纹的有效信息,为后续的处理过程提供了良好的图像基础。     

TDNLMS自适应预测器有限字长效应分析及其在设计中的应用

为了使预测器在特定应用环境中的有限字长效应满足应用系统的性能要求，以小目标检测为应用背景，提出了理论和实验相结合的确定TDNLMS(二维归一化最小均方误差)自适应预测器运算字长的方法。同时分析了步长参数、输人数据字长、图像统计特性、预测器支撑区域等因素与TDNLMS自适应预测器权值和迭代运算中间结果量化误差之间的联系，并通过实验对分析结果进行了验证。仿真结果表明，用该方法设计的有限精度预测器，其小目标检测性能与无限精度预测器十分接近。     

Font adaptive word indexing of modern printed documents

We propose an approach for the word-level indexing of modern printed documents which are difficult to recognize using current OCR engines. By means of word-level indexing, it is possible to retrieve the position of words in a document, enabling queries involving proximity of terms. Web search engines implement this kind of indexing, allowing users to retrieve Web pages on the basis of their textual content. Nowadays, digital libraries hold collections of digitized documents that can be retrieved either by browsing the document images or relying on appropriate metadata assembled by domain experts. Word indexing tools would therefore increase the access to these collections. The proposed system is designed to index homogeneous document collections by automatically adapting to different languages and font styles without relying on OCR engines for character recognition. The approach is based on three main ideas: the use of self organizing maps (SOM) to perform unsupervised character clustering, the definition of one suitable vector-based word representation whose size depends on the word aspect-ratio, and the run-time alignment of the query word with indexed words to deal with broken and touching characters. The most appropriate applications are for processing modern printed documents (17th to 19th centuries) where current OCR engines are less accurate. Our experimental analysis addresses six data sets containing documents ranging from books of the 17th century to contemporary journals.     

Concept-based indexing of annotated images using semantic DNA

One of the challenges in image retrieval is dealing with concepts which have no visual appearance in the images or are not used as keywords in their annotations. To address this problem, this paper proposes an unsupervised concept-based image indexing technique which uses a lexical ontology to extract semantic signatures called ‘semantic chromosomes’ from image annotations. A semantic chromosome is an information structure, which carries the semantic information of an image; it is the semantic signature of an image in a collection expressed through a set of semantic DNA (SDNA), each of them representing a concept. Central to the concept-based indexing technique discussed is the concept disambiguation algorithm developed, which identifies the most relevant ‘semantic DNA’ (SDNA) by measuring the semantic importance of each word/phrase in the annotation. The concept disambiguation algorithm is evaluated using crowdsourcing. The experiments show that the algorithm has better accuracy (79.4%) than the accuracy demonstrated by other unsupervised algorithms (73%) in the 2007 Semeval competition. It is also comparable with the accuracy achieved in the same competition by the supervised algorithms (82–83%) which contrary to the approach proposed in this paper have to be trained with large corpora. The approach is currently applied to the automated generation of mood boards used as an inspirational tool in concept design.