Texture Recognition and Image Retrieval Using Gradient Indexing

Our starting point is gradient indexing, the characterization of texture by a feature vector that comprises a histogram derived from the image gradient field. We investigate the use of gradient indexing for texture recognition and image retrieval. We find that gradient indexing is a robust measure with respect to the number of bins and to the choice of the gradient operator. We also find that the gradient direction and magnitude are equally effective in recognizing different textures. Furthermore, a variant of gradient indexing called local activity spectrum is proposed and shown to have improved performance. Local activity spectrum is employed in an image retrieval system as the texture statistic. The retrieval system is based on a segmentation technique employing a distance measure called Sum of Minimum Distance. This system enables content-based retrieval of database images from templates of arbitrary size.     

An efficient signature representation for retrieval of spatially similar images

Multimedia applications involving image retrieval demand fast and efficient response. Efficiency of search and retrieval of information in a database system is index dependent. Generally, a two-level indexing scheme in an image database can help to reduce the search space against a given query image. In such type of indexing scheme, the first level is required to significantly reduce the search space for second stage of comparisons and must be computationally efficient. It is also required to guarantee that no false negatives may result. The second level of indexing involves more detailed analysis and comparison of potentially relevant images. In this paper, we present an efficient signature representation scheme for first level of a two-level image indexing scheme that is based on hierarchical decomposition of image space into spatial arrangement of image features. Experimental results demonstrate that our signature representation scheme results in fewer number of matching signatures in the first level and significantly improves the overall computational time. As this scheme relies on corner points as the salient feature points in an image to describe its contents, we also compare results using several different contemporary corner detection methods. Further, we formally prove that the proposed signature representation scheme not only results in fewer number of signatures but also does not result in any false negative.     

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.     

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.     

PicToSeek: combining color and shape invariant features for imageretrieval

We aim at combining color and shape invariants for indexing and retrieving images. To this end, color models are proposed independent of the object geometry, object pose, and illumination. From these color models, color invariant edges are derived from which shape invariant features are computed. Computational methods are described to combine the color and shape invariants into a unified high-dimensional invariant feature set for discriminatory object retrieval. Experiments have been conducted on a database consisting of 500 images taken from multicolored man-made objects in real world scenes. From the theoretical and experimental results it is concluded that object retrieval based on composite color and shape invariant features provides excellent retrieval accuracy. Object retrieval based on color invariants provides very high retrieval accuracy whereas object retrieval based entirely on shape invariants yields poor discriminative power. Furthermore, the image retrieval scheme is highly robust to partial occlusion, object clutter and a change in the object's pose. Finally, the image retrieval scheme is integrated into the PicToSeek system on-line at http://www.wins.uva.nl/research/isis/PicToSeek/ for searching images on the World Wide Web.     

A Novel Web Image Retrieval Method

Traditional image retrieval methods, make use of color, shape and texture features, are based on local image database. But in the condition of which much more images are available on the internet, so big an image database includes various types of image information. In this paper, we introduce an intellectualized image retrieval method based on internet, which can grasp images on Internet automatically using web crawler and build the feature vector in local host. The method involves three parts: the capture-node, the manage-node, and the calculate-node. The calculate-node has two functions: feature extract and similarity measurement. According to the results of our experiments, we found the proposed method is simple to realization and has higher processing speed and accuracy.     

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.     

Embedded lattices tree: An efficient indexing scheme for content based retrieval on image databases

One of the challenges in the development of a content-based multimedia indexing and retrieval application is to achieve an efficient indexing scheme. To retrieve a particular image from a large scale image database, users can be frustrated by the long query times. Conventional indexing structures cannot usually cope with the presence of a large amount of feature vectors in high-dimensional space. This paper addresses such problems and presents a novel indexing technique, the embedded lattices tree, which is designed to bring an effective solution especially for realizing the trade off between the retrieval speed up and precision.The embedded lattices tree is based on a lattice vector quantization algorithm that divides the feature vectors progressively into smaller partitions using a finer scaling factor. The efficiency of the similarity queries is significantly improved by using the hierarchy and the good algebraic and geometric properties of the lattice. Furthermore, the dimensionality reduction that we perform on the feature vectors, translating from an upper level to a lower one of the embedded tree, reduces the complexity of measuring similarity between feature vectors. In addition, it enhances the performance on nearest neighbor queries especially for high dimensions. Our experimental results show that the retrieval speed is significantly improved and the indexing structure shows no sign of degradations when the database size is increased.     

An efficient and effective region-based image retrieval framework

An image retrieval framework that integrates efficient region-based representation in terms of storage and complexity and effective on-line learning capability is proposed. The framework consists of methods for region-based image representation and comparison, indexing using modified inverted files, relevance feedback, and learning region weighting. By exploiting a vector quantization method, both compact and sparse (vector) region-based image representations are achieved. Using the compact representation, an indexing scheme similar to the inverted file technology and an image similarity measure based on Earth Mover's Distance are presented. Moreover, the vector representation facilitates a weighted query point movement algorithm and the compact representation enables a classification-based algorithm for relevance feedback. Based on users' feedback information, a region weighting strategy is also introduced to optimally weight the regions and enable the system to self-improve. Experimental results on a database of 10,000 general-purposed images demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed framework.     

基于重组DCT系数子带能量直方图的图像检索

现在许多图像采用JPEG格式存储,检索这些图像通常要先解压缩,然后提取基于像素域的特征矢量进行图像检索。己有文献提出直接在DCT域进行图像检索的方法,这样可以降低检索的时间复杂度。本文提出对JPEG图像的DCT系数利用多分辨率小波变换的形式进行重组,对整个数据库中所有图像的DCT系数重组得到的若干子带,分别建立子带能量直方图,而后采用Morton顺序建立每幅图像的索引,并采用变形B树结构组织图像数据库用于图像检索。     

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。     

基于灰度和边界方向直方图的医学图像检索

本文研究了采用分级检索的机制,综合利用灰度及形状特征进行基于内容的医学图像检索的方法,该方法克服了灰度直方图不能充分表示空间分布信息的不足。利用边界方向直方图描述形状特征,避开了对图像进行精确分割这一医学图像处理中的难点问题。对CT图像数据库进行的检索实验,验证了该方法具有良好的检索性能。     

Effective image retrieval based on hidden concept discovery in image database.

This paper addresses content-based image retrieval in general, and in particular, focuses on developing a hidden semantic concept discovery methodology to address effective semantics-intensive image retrieval. In our approach, each image in the database is segmented into regions associated with homogenous color, texture, and shape features. By exploiting regional statistical information in each image and employing a vector quantization method, a uniform and sparse region-based representation is achieved. With this representation, a probabilistic model based on statistical-hidden-class assumptions of the image database is obtained, to which the expectation-maximization technique is applied to analyze semantic concepts hidden in the database. An elaborated retrieval algorithm is designed to support the probabilistic model. The semantic similarity is measured through integrating the posterior probabilities of the transformed query image, as well as a constructed negative example, to the discovered semantic concepts. The proposed approach has a solid statistical foundation; the experimental evaluations on a database of 10000 general-purposed images demonstrate its promise and effectiveness.     

Texture-based image indexing in the process of lossless data compression

The authors describe a new approach for content-based image indexing and retrieval by extracting texture features from the process of image compression via JPEG-LS. Since the compression technique adopted incorporates local edge detection to formulate predictive values for pixels being encoded, the texture features extracted by the proposed algorithms are also capable of describing image content in terms of edges and shapes of local objects without adding any significant complexity to the original JPEG-LS. While lossless data compression helps in saving storage space automatically for image databases, the extensive experiments also show that this type of feature extraction produces better retrieval results in comparison with existing similar indexing techniques which are carried out without data compression.     

Object segmentation and labeling by learning from examples

We propose a system that employs low-level image segmentation followed by color and two-dimensional (2-D) shape matching to automatically group those low-level segments into objects based on their similarity to a set of example object templates presented by the user. A hierarchical content tree data structure is used for each database image to store matching combinations of low-level regions as objects. The system automatically initializes the content tree with only "elementary nodes" representing homogeneous low-level regions. The "learning" phase refers to labeling of combinations of low-level regions that have resulted in successful color and/or 2-D shape matches with the example template(s). These combinations are labeled as "object nodes" in the hierarchical content tree. Once learning is performed, the speed of second-time retrieval of learned objects in the database increases significantly. The learning step can be performed off-line provided that example objects are given in the form of user interest profiles. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system with hierarchical content tree representation and learning by color and 2-D shape matching on collections of car and face images.     

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.