Image annotation refinement via 2P-KNN based group sparse reconstruction

Image annotation aims at predicting labels that can accurately describe the semantic information of images. In the past few years, many methods have been proposed to solve the image annotation problem. However, the predicted labels of the images by these methods are usually incomplete, insufficient and noisy, which is unsatisfactory. In this paper, we propose a new method denoted as 2PKNN-GSR (Group Sparse Reconstruction) for image annotation and label refinement. First, we get the predicted labels of the testing images using the traditional method, i.e., a two-step variant of the classical K-nearest neighbor algorithm, called 2PKNN. Then, according to the obtained labels, we divide the K nearest neighbors of an image in the training images into several groups. Finally, we utilize the group sparse reconstruction algorithm to refine the annotated label results which are obtained in the first step. Experimental results on three standard datasets, i.e., Corel 5K, IAPR TC12 and ESP Game, show the superior performance of the proposed method compared with the state-of-the-art methods.