基于二值信息的颜色和形状特征的图像检索

由于单一特征不足以准确地描述图像,提出了一种结合颜色、形状特征的图像检索方法.提出了新的用二值信息来表示图像的主色、全局色和形状特征的方法,并由此特征构造两个过滤器快速地过滤图像库中明显不相同的图像,以提高检索速度;采用改进的颜色直方图和形状基本特征进行相似度计算,为进一步提高图像检索的质量引入相关反馈机制,提出了一种动态调整两幅图像相似度中颜色特征和形状特征的权值系数的方法.文中方法与其它方法进行了比较实验,结果表明,该方法优于其它方法.     

An Evaluation of Color-Spatial Retrieval Techniques for Large Image Databases

In a color-spatial retrieval technique, the color information is integrated with the knowledge of the colors' spatial distribution to facilitate content-based image retrieval. Several techniques have been proposed in the literature, but these works have been developed independently without much comparison. In this paper, we present an experimental evaluation of three color-spatial retrieval techniques—the signature-based technique, the partition-based algorithm and the cluster-based method. We implemented these techniques and compare them on their retrieval effectiveness and retrieval efficiency. The experimental study is performed on an image database consisting of 12,000 images. With the proliferation of image retrieval mechanisms and the lack of extensive performance study, the experimental results can serve as guidelines in selecting a suitable technique and designing a new technique.     

Fast image retrieval using color-spatial information

In this paper, we present an image retrieval system that employs both the color and spatial information of images to facilitate the retrieval process. The basic unit used in our technique is a single-colored cluster, which bounds a homogeneous region of that color in an image. Two clusters from two images are similar if they are of the same color and overlap in the image space. The number of clusters that can be extracted from an image can be very large, and it affects the accuracy of retrieval. We study the effect of the number of clusters on retrieval effectiveness to determine an appropriate value for “optimal' performance. To facilitate efficient retrieval, we also propose a multi-tier indexing mechanism called the Sequenced Multi-Attribute Tree (SMAT). We implemented a two-tier SMAT, where the first layer is used to prune away clusters that are of different colors, while the second layer discriminates clusters of different spatial locality. We conducted an experimental study on an image database consisting of 12,000 images. Our results show the effectiveness of the proposed color-spatial approach, and the efficiency of the proposed indexing mechanism. Received August 1, 1997 / Accepted December 9, 1997     

Ego-similarity measurement for relevance feedback

Relevance Feedback in Content-Based Image Retrieval is an active field of research. Many mechanisms of Relevance Feedback exist with many interactive techniques and implement criteria. In this paper, we proposed a novel approach of RF which can set adaptive weights of similarity measurement for each database image from the user feedback, i.e. ego-similarity measurement. We would explore the feedback records were archived in the two different ways that stored along with query images (QRF-based) or along with each retrieved relevant image from the image database (DBRF-based). In the experiment, DBRF-based relevant feedback improved greatly in the retrieval effectiveness.     

遗传反馈的多特征图像检索

基于内容的图像检索是随着数字多媒体技术的发展和普及而新兴的一门信息检索技术。针对当前该领域存在的对图像描述不准确、查询精度低以及反馈次数较多的问题,提出一种基于遗传反馈的图像检索算法。该算法以遗传算法和相关反馈为基础,利用多特征进行检索,避免在利用单一特征进行检索时所出现的不同图像具有相同单一特征（颜色、纹理和形状等）的问题,对图像进行多特征描述可以从多个角度对图像进行定义,大大减少了不同图像却具有相同特征的概率。与现有的算法相比,其具有自动调整图像特征权重、较低反馈次数和较高查询精度的特性。实验结果表明,该算法对于旋转、平移和尺度变化具有较强的鲁棒性,同时具有减少反馈次数和较高查询精度的性能。     

An image retrieval system with automatic query modification

Most interactive "query-by-example" based image retrieval systems utilize relevance feedback from the user for bridging the gap between the user's implied concept and the low-level image representation in the database. However, traditional relevance feedback usage in the context of content-based image retrieval (CBIR) may not be very efficient due to a significant overhead in database search and image download time in client-server environments. In this paper, we propose a CBIR system that efficiently addresses the inherent subjectivity in user perception during a retrieval session by employing a novel idea of intra-query modification and learning. The proposed system generates an object-level view of the query image using a new color segmentation technique. Color, shape and spatial features of individual segments are used for image representation and retrieval. The proposed system automatically generates a set of modifications by manipulating the features of the query segment(s). An initial estimate of user perception is learned from the user feedback provided on the set of modified images. This largely improves the precision in the first database search itself and alleviates the overheads of database search and image download. Precision-to-recall ratio is improved in further iterations through a new relevance feedback technique that utilizes both positive as well as negative examples. Extensive experiments have been conducted to demonstrate the feasibility and advantages of the proposed system.     

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.     

Supporting image retrieval framework with rule base system

The present paper introduces an image retrieval framework based on a rule base system. The proposed framework makes use of color and texture features, respectively called color co-occurrence matrix (CCM) and difference between pixels of scan pattern (DBPSP). These features are used to perform the image mining for acquiring clustering knowledge from a large empirical images database. Irrelevance between images of the same cluster is precisely considered in the proposed framework through a relevance feedback phase followed by a novel clustering refinement model. The images and their corresponding classes pass to a rule base system for extracting a set of accurate rules. These rules are pruning and may reduce the dimensionality of the extracted features. The advantage of the proposed framework is reflected in the retrieval process, which is limited to the images in the class of rule matched with the query image features. Experiments show that the proposed model achieves a very good performance in terms of the average precision, recall and retrieval time compared with other models.     

Color image retrieval using multispectral random field texture model and color content features

This paper describes a color-texture-based image retrieval system for query of an image database to find similar images to a target image. The color-texture information is obtained via modeling with the multispectral simultaneous autoregressive (MSAR) random field model. The general color content characterized by ratios of sample color means is also used. The retrieval process involves segmenting the image into regions of uniform color texture using an unsupervised histogram clustering approach that utilizes the combination of MSAR and color features. The color-texture content, location, area and shape of the segmented regions are used to develop similarity measures describing the closeness of a query image to database images. These attributes are derived from the maximum fitting square and best fitting ellipse to each of the segmented regions. The proposed similarity measure combines all these attributes to rank the closeness of the images. The performance of the system is tested on two databases containing synthetic mosaics of natural textures and natural scenes, respectively.     

基于颜色空间分布特征的图像检索

目前,基于颜色特征的图像检索大多是以图像的颜色直方图作为颜色特征,这种图像检索方法有简单高效的优点,但丢失了颜色的空间分布信息,该文从CT图像重建的理论中得到启发,将对一幅图像从几个方向的投影图作为这幅图像的颜色特征分布。为进一步减少检索时运算的数据量,对图像做小波分解,然后对分解后图像的低频子带做Radon变换得到颜色空间分布的特征向量,并根据这个特征进行检索,实验表明,当检索图像中有明显的颜色目标时,该方法比传统的颜色直方图法更精确,颜色空间性更强,而且检索用时更短。     

Image database indexing using JPEG coefficients

Image database indexing is used for efficient retrieval of images in response to a query expressed as an example image. The query image is processed to extract information that is matched against the index to provide pointers to similar images. We present a technique that facilitates content similarity-based retrieval of jpeg-compressed images without first having to uncompress them. The technique is based on an index developed from a subset of jpeg coefficients and a similarity measure to determine the difference between the query image and the images in the database. This method offers substantial efficiency as images are processed in compressed format, information that was derived during the original compression of the images is reused, and extensive early pruning is possible. Initial experiments with the index have provided encouraging results. The system outputs a set of ranked images in the database with respect to the query using the similarity measure, and can be limited to output a specified number of matched images by changing the threshold match.     

基于分形编码拓扑特性的图像检索

为了更有效、更准确地进行图像检索，提出了一种利用分形编码这项重要的拓扑特性来处理图像索引的新方法，即将图像经分形编码，首先得到每张图像的迭代函数，然后将其伴随图像存人数据库中，成为该图像的索引文件最后对数据库进行搜索时，则通过对此索引文件的比对来找出与查询图像相似的图像。反观使用其他方法建立的图像索引数据库，则无法证明其建立的索引文件具有上述特质。实验显示，图像经过分形编码所表现出的几何性质以及独特的有效性和鲁棒性，证明该方法是一个更有效率、准确度高的检索方法。     

Filter Image Browsing: Interactive Image Retrieval by Using Database Overviews

Human-computer interaction is a decisive factor in effective content-based access to large image repositories. In current image retrieval systems the user refines his query by selecting example images from a relevance ranking. Since the top ranked images are all similar, user feedback often results in rearrangement of the presented images only.For better incorporation of user interaction in the retrieval process, we have developed the Filter Image Browsing method. It also uses feedback through image selection. However, it is based on differences between images rather than similarities. Filter Image Browsing presents overviews of relevant parts of the database to users. Through interaction users then zoom in on parts of the image collection. By repeatedly limiting the information space, the user quickly ends up with a small amount of relevant images. The method can easily be extended for the retrieval of multimedia objects.For evaluation of the Filter Image Browsing retrieval concept, a user simulation is applied to a pictorial database containing 10,000 images acquired from the World Wide Web by a search robot. The simulation incorporates uncertainty in the definition of the information need by users. Results show Filter Image Browsing outperforms plain interactive similarity ranking in required effort from the user. Also, the method produces predictable results for retrieval sessions, so that the user quickly knows if a successful session is possible at all. Furthermore, the simulations show the overview techniques are suited for applications such as hand-held devices where screen space is limited.     

Virtual images for similarity retrieval in image databases

We introduce the virtual image, an iconic index suited for pictorial information access in a pictorial database, and a similarity retrieval approach based on virtual images to perform content-based retrieval. A virtual image represents the spatial information contained in a real image in explicit form by means of a set of spatial relations. This is useful to efficiently compute the similarity between a query and an image in the database. We also show that virtual images support real-world applications that require translation, reflection, and/or rotation invariance of image representation     

融合区域特征和相关反馈的图像检索

提出了一种新的基于内容的图像检索算法,该算法提取图像的颜色-空间特征,在HSV空间中将图像按照H分量进行区域划分,利用区域特征层面上的相似度对图像进行检索,并引入用户的相关反馈来调整并记录示例图像中各对象的特征权值。实验结果表明,该算法可以使计算机更加精确地理解用户的查询要求,提高查询的准确率。     

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.     

图像相似模式挖掘中的颜色-位置直方图方法

颜色直方图计算简单快捷 ,对大小、方向、物体移动和视点等不敏感而在基于内容的图像检索中得到了广泛的应用 .然而 ,由于它只包含颜色的总体信息而没有反映其相对位置 ,检索精度受到了一定的限制 .针对这个问题 ,提出了一种颜色 -位置直方图 ,该直方图在不失传统直方图鲁棒性的前提下 ,将颜色和位置信息有机地融合起来 ,同时考虑它们对图像内容的表征作用 .由于该直方图在反映颜色频率的同时也记录其分段虚拟边界的位置信息 ,因而较好地解决了传统直方图存在的问题 .对合成图像和实际图像所做的实验结果表明 ,该方法是有效的 ,具有一定的实用价值 .     

一种基于内容的图象检索方法的实现

现有的许多多媒体数据库系统只提供了基于媒体描述关键字的检索和查询，却忽略了另一个重要的信息来源——媒体的内容。基于内容的图象检索技术一般采用颜色直方图为特征，但是这种方法不能反映空间特性。本文在直方图技术的基础上引入了颜色对方法，将图象的空间特性反映出来，因而能检索具有清晰边界的图象，并且图象的大小变化和旋转以及轻微的光照变化不影响检索结果。实验结果表明这种方法改善了检索效果。