Content-based image indexing and searching using Daubechies' wavelets

This paper describes WBIIS (Wavelet-Based Image Indexing and Searching), a new image indexing and retrieval algorithm with partial sketch image searching capability for large image databases. The algorithm characterizes the color variations over the spatial extent of the image in a manner that provides semantically meaningful image comparisons. The indexing algorithm applies a Daubechies' wavelet transform for each of the three opponent color components. The wavelet coefficients in the lowest few frequency bands, and their variances, are stored as feature vectors. To speed up retrieval, a two-step procedure is used that first does a crude selection based on the variances, and then refines the search by performing a feature vector match between the selected images and the query. For better accuracy in searching, two-level multiresolution matching may also be used. Masks are used for partial-sketch queries. This technique performs much better in capturing coherence of image, object granularity, local color/texture, and bias avoidance than traditional color layout algorithms. WBIIS is much faster and more accurate than traditional algorithms. When tested on a database of more than 10 000 general-purpose images, the best 100 matches were found in 3.3 seconds.     

矢量量化用于颜色图像检索的改进方法

为了消除基于颜色的图像检索在颜色空间分布描述方向的不足,提出一种新的基于颜色的检索方法。引入颜色转移矩阵描述颜色的空间分布,再结合颜色直方图和颜色转移矩阵进行复合图像检索。同时通过矢量量化方法量化图像颜色得到颜色直方图和颜色转移矩阵,实现了在压缩领域进行图像检索,减少了额外计算负担。实验表明,该方法能有效提高检索效率和精度。     

Color indexing for efficient image retrieval

Content based image retrieval is an active area of research. Many approaches have been proposed to retrieve images based on matching of some features derived from the image content. Color is an important feature of image content. The problem with many traditional matching-based retrieval methods is that the search time for retrieving similar images for a given query image increases linearly with the size of the image database. We present an efficient color indexing scheme for similarity-based retrieval which has a search time that increases logarithmically with the database size.In our approach, the color features are extracted automatically using a color clustering algorithm. Then the cluster centroids are used as representatives of the images in 3-dimensional color space and are indexed using a spatial indexing method that usesR-tree. The worst case search time complexity of this approach isOn _q log(N^* n_avg)), whereN is the number of images in the database, andn _q andn _avg are the number of colors in the query image and the average number of colors per image in the database respectively. We present the experimental results for the proposed approach on two databases consisting of 337 Trademark images and 200 Flag images.     

Content-based facial image retrieval using common vector

Abstract： Facial image retrieval is an essential application of content-based image retrieval. Based on the analysis of the practical application background, this paper proposes a new facial image retrieval scheme. In this scheme, the input query image is firstly transformed by four different methods to generate virtual samples and enlarge the training set. Moreover common vector method is applied to span the feature space for the training set whose images just belong to one class. To prove the feasibility of the scheme, a series of experiments are performed on the ORL face database.     

Image indexing and retrieval based on color histograms

While general object recognition is difficult, it is relatively easy to capture various primitive properties such as color distributions, prominent regions and their topological features from an image and use them to narrow down the search space when attempts to retrieving images by contents from an image database are made.In this paper, we present an image database in which images are indexed and retrieved based on color histograms. We first address the problems inherent in color histograms created by the conventional method, and then propose a new method to create histograms which are compact in size and insensitive to minor illumination variations such as highlight, shape, and etc. A powerful indexing scheme where each histogram of an image is encoded into a numerical key, and stored in a two-layered tree structure is introduced. This approach turns the problem of histogram matching, which is computation intensive, into index key search, so as to realize quick data access in a large scale image database. Two types of user interfaces, Query by user provided sample images, and Query by combination of the system provided templates, are provided to meet various user requests. Various experimental evaluations exhibit the effectiveness of the image database system.     

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.     

Multi-joint histogram based modelling for image indexing and retrieval

This paper presents a novel approach for image retrieval, named multi-joint histogram based modelling (MJHM), in which the joint correlation histograms are constructed between the motif and texton maps. Firstly, the quantized image is divided into non-overlapping 2 × 2 grids. Then each grid is replaced by a scan motif and texton values to construct the transformed motif and texton maps (images) respectively. The motif transformed map minimizes the local gradient and texton transformed map identifies the equality of grayscales while traversing the 2 × 2 grid. Finally, the correlation histograms are constructed between the transformed motif and texton maps. The performance of the proposed method (MJHM) is tested by conducting two experiments on Corel-5K and Corel-10K benchmark databases. The results after investigation show significant improvements in terms of precision, average retrieval precision (ARP), recall and average retrieval rate (ARR) as compared to multi-texton histogram (MTH), smart content based image retrieval system (CMCM) and other state-of-the-art techniques for image retrieval.     

基于模糊支持向量机的面向语义图像检索算法*

为了缩减图像低层特征和高层语义之间的“语义鸿沟”,本文提出一种基于模糊支持向量机的面向语义图像检索(SBIR-FSVM)算法。在提取图像的低层特征的基础上,本文将最小隶属度模糊支持向量机引入到图像检索技术中,获取图像语义信息及消除传统支持向量机(SVM)在多类分类中产生的不可分区域,从而实现面向语义的图像检索。实验结果表明,本文提出的SBIR-FSVM算法与基于SVM的图像检索算法及综合多特征的基于内容的图像检索算法相比均有了显著的改进。     

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     

彩色图像检索方法

对彩色图像的检索进行了研究,提出了彩色图像检索的方法.该方法首先对彩色图像进行聚类,再使用聚类后图像的主颜色进行颜色相似度计算,使用基于奇异值向量的主颜色矩阵进行空间相似度计算,最后给出了基于主颜色的颜色信息和空间分布信息的图像内容相似度计算方法.进行检索时,可根据检索要求自适应地改变颜色和空间分布的权重,增加了系统的有效性.实验结果表明,该方法实现简单,能够更加灵活、准确地描述图像的颜色特征,从而有效提高了图像检索的准确率.     

Enhanced Gabor wavelet correlogram feature for image indexing and retrieval

In this paper, a new feature scheme called enhanced Gabor wavelet correlogram (EGWC) is proposed for image indexing and retrieval. EGWC uses Gabor wavelets to decompose the image into different scales and orientations. The Gabor wavelet coefficients are then quantized using optimized quantization thresholds. In the next step, the autocorrelogram of the quantized wavelet coefficients is computed in each wavelet scale and orientation. Finally, the EGWC index vector simply consists of the autocorrelogram coefficients. Due to non-orthogonality of Gabor decomposition, the resulting wavelet coefficients suffer from redundancy, which increases the computational cost and reduces the effectiveness of EGWC. Here, we present a solution to handle the redundancy problem using non-maximum suppression and adjustment of autocorrelogram distance parameters as a function of the wavelet scale. The retrieval results obtained by applying EGWC to index two image databases with 5,000 natural images and 1,792 texture images demonstrated its better performance in terms of retrieval rates with respect to the state-of-the-art content-based and multidirectional texture indexing algorithms.     

Image retrieval using color histograms generated by Gauss mixture vector quantization

Image retrieval based on color histograms requires quantization of a color space. Uniform scalar quantization of each color channel is a popular method for the reduction of histogram dimensionality. With this method, however, no spatial information among pixels is considered in constructing the histograms. Vector quantization (VQ) provides a simple and effective means for exploiting spatial information by clustering groups of pixels. We propose the use of Gauss mixture vector quantization (GMVQ) as a quantization method for color histogram generation. GMVQ is known to be robust for quantizer mismatch, which motivates its use in making color histograms for both the query image and the images in the database. Results show that the histograms made by GMVQ with a penalized log-likelihood (LL) distortion yield better retrieval performance for color images than the conventional methods of uniform quantization and VQ with squared error distortion.     

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.     

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.     

Region-based image retrieval using integrated color, shape, and location index

A technique to retrieve images by region matching using a combined feature index based on color, shape, and location is presented within the framework of MPEG-7. Dominant regions within each image are indexed using integrated color, shape, and location features. Various combinations of regions are also indexed. The resulting indices and related metadata are stored in a Hash structure, where similar images tend to form clusters. The retrieval process is non-cascading and images can be retrieved based on color, shape or location and also based on a combined color–shape–location index. Results obtained show that retrieval effectiveness increases in non-cascaded region-based querying by combined index.     

Expert system design using wavelet and color vocabulary trees for image retrieval

A new image indexing and retrieval system for content based image retrieval (CBIR) is proposed in this paper. The characteristics (vector points) of image are computed using color (color histogram) and SOT (spatial orientation tree). The SOT defines the spatial parent-child relationship among wavelet coefficients in multi-resolution wavelet sub-bands. First the image is divided into sub-blocks and then constructed the SOT for each low pass wavelet coefficient is considered as a vector point of that particular image. Similarly the color histogram features are collected from the each sub-block. The vector points of each image are indexed using vocabulary tree. The retrieval results of the proposed method are tested on different image databases, i.e., natural image database consists of Corel 1000 (DB1), Brodatz texture image database (DB2) and MIT VisTex database (DB3). The results after being investigated show a significant improvement in terms of average precision, average recall and average retrieval rate on DB1 database and average retrieval rate on texture databases (DB2 and DB3) as compared with most of existing techniques on respective databases.     

An ontology-based retrieval system using semantic indexing

In this paper, we present an ontology-based information extraction and retrieval system and its application in the soccer domain. In general, we deal with three issues in semantic search, namely, usability, scalability and retrieval performance. We propose a keyword-based semantic retrieval approach. The performance of the system is improved considerably using domain-specific information extraction, inferencing and rules. Scalability is achieved by adapting a semantic indexing approach and representing the whole world as small independent models. The system is implemented using the state-of-the-art technologies in Semantic Web and its performance is evaluated against traditional systems as well as the query expansion methods. Furthermore, a detailed evaluation is provided to observe the performance gain due to domain-specific information extraction and inferencing. Finally, we show how we use semantic indexing to solve simple structural ambiguities.     

In depth analysis and evaluation of saliency-based color image indexing methods using wavelet salient features

Nowadays, most of the research works in the area of image retrieval try to build an image signature by considering the image as a whole. In this paper, we proposed an alternative based on the detection of some salient points in the image. For this purpose, we propose a new efficient salient point detector based on a wavelet transform. The efficiency of our detector lies in the representation of the wavelet coefficients by a zerotree data structure and by a saliency formulation that does not favor any direction. Thus, the detected salient points are located on sharp region boundaries whatever their direction. From the detected salient points, we build a color/texture signature by using jointly the well-known color correlogram extended to salient features and rotated wavelet filter responses. Experimental results conducted by adopting a global salient approach and a local salient approach show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.