Object-based Image Retrieval with Attention Analysis and Spatial Re-ranking

Most existing object-based image retrieval systems are based on single object matching, with its main limitation being that one individual image region (object) can hardly represent the user’s retrieval target, especially when more than one object of interest is involved in the retrieval. Integrated Region Matching (IRM) has been used to improve the retrieval accuracy by evaluating the overall similarity between images and incorporating the properties of all the regions in the images. However, IRM does not take the user’s preferred regions into account and has undesirable time complexity. In this article, we present a Feedback-based Image Clustering and Retrieval Framework (FIRM) using a novel image clustering algorithm and integrating it with Integrated Region Matching (IRM) and Relevance Feedback (RF). The performance of the system is evaluated on a large image database, demonstrating the effectiveness of our framework in catching users’ retrieval interests in object-based image retrieval.

Recent years, the stereo image has become an emerging media in the field of 3D technology, which leads to an urgent demand of stereo image retrieval. In this paper, we attempt to introduce a framework for object-based stereo image retrieval (OBSIR), which retrieves images containing the similar objects to the one captured in the query image by the user. The proposed approach consists of both online and offline procedures. In the offline procedure, we propose a salient object segmentation method making use of both color and depth to extract objects from each image. The extracted objects are then represented by multiple visual feature descriptors. In order to improve the image search efficiently, we construct an approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) index using cluster-based locality sensitive hashing (LSH). In the online stage, the user may supply the query object by selecting a region of interest (ROI) in the query image, or clicking one of the objects recommended by the salient object detector. For the image retrieval evaluation we build a new dataset containing over 10K stereo images. The experiments on this dataset show that the proposed method can effectively recommend the correct object and the final retrieval result is also better than other baseline methods.

Query by image content is a method to retrieve the most important images from the image database. It is an answer for the problem of searching for digital images in large database. A large number of relevance feedback schemes have been developed to improve the performance of content based image retrieval. In this paper we propose biased discriminant Euclidean embedding that form intraclass geometry and interclass discrimination. In this method images can be grouped by their similarity. In order to achieve this, firstly the visual features of the images are found out. In addition to this we use two clustering algorithms to assemble the images into clusters using their low level visual features. Here we have to filter the images in the hierarchical clustering and then apply the clustered images to K-Means, so that we can get the most relevant images. Query image is compared directly with the images in the clusters. Therefore number of comparisons is reduced because query image is compared only with the images in the clusters instead of comparing with all images in the database.

Image Indexing and Retrieval Using Object-based Point Feature Maps

Image retrieval is an important problem in multimedia systems. It is determined as the process of searching and fetching images from a dataset. Content-based Image Retrieval (CBIR) is a significant and challenging field of research in digital image processing. The CBIR system's essential requirement is to retrieve the relevant information following a query image with higher system output from a large image database. Unfortunately, not all the methods are suitable to be used to get high accuracy of retrieval. Therefore, this research aims to classify the data of query image with the data of image database to get a similar image retrieval using Support Vector Machine (SVM) and validate its accuracy based on the classification for the performance evaluation using the precision-recall measure. The critical point of SVM is to get an optimal hyperplane that separates the data points into two classes. This method was applied to different image databases because the classified-based proposed scheme proved better performance than various existing methods. This project assessed experimental results toward 500 images of the Caltech-256 image dataset to demonstrate the proposed method. For retrieving a similar image following the query image, 20 images from five classes were successfully retrieved by using this method. It will show that the SVM method's average accuracy from all image classes is 94.79%.

Matching local features across images is often useful when comparing or recognizing objects or scenes, and efficient techniques for obtaining image-to-image correspondences have been developed [4, 11, 16]. However, given a query image, searching a very large image database with such measures remains impractical. We introduce a sub-linear time randomized hashing algorithm for indexing sets of feature vectors under their partial correspondences. We develop an efficient embedding function for the normalized partial matching similarity between sets, and show how to exploit random hyperplane properties to construct hash functions that satisfy locality-sensitive constraints. The result is a bounded approximate similarity search algorithm that finds (1 + epsiv)-approximate nearest neighbor images in O(N1/1+epsiv) time for a database containing N images represented by (varying numbers of) local features. We demonstrate our approach applied to image retrieval for images represented by sets of local appearance features, and show that searching over correspondences is now scalable to large image databases.

Image database technology is based on relation database. It requires entrying the image or hotspot query and analyzing the structure of image database. This paper research on how to design resonable image database and image hotspot processing, using expansion database schema and image processing technology such as BLOB. It's a formidable task to achieve image hotspot query through large image database. The result shows that image query system can effectively solve the problems like image entrying, retrieval and hotspots processing.

With the rapid advancement of digital imaging technologies, and the use of large volume image databases in various applications, it becomes imperative to build an automatic and an efficient image retrieval system. Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) is most emerging and vivid research area in computer vision, in which unknown query image assigns to the closest possible similar images available in the database. Current systems mainly use colour, texture, and shape information for image retrieval using similarity measures between query and database images features. Here this work, proposed a classification system that allows recognizing and recovering the class of a query image based on its visual content. This successful categorization of images greatly enhances the performance of retrieval by filtering out irrelevant classes. In this way we have done the comparative analysis of various features as an individual or in combinations, with direct similarity measure and proposed framework. Experimentson benchmark Wang database show that the proposed classification & retrieval framework performs significantly better than the common framework of distances.

A novel approach to clustering for image segmentation and a new object-based image retrieval method are proposed. The clustering is achieved using the Fisher discriminant as an objective function. The objective function is improved by adding a spatial constraint that encourages neighboring pixels to take on the same class label. A six-dimensional feature vector is used for clustering by way of the combination of color and busyness features for each pixel. After clustering, the dominant segments in each class are chosen based on area and used to extract features for image retrieval. The color content is represented using a histogram, and Haar wavelets are used to represent the texture feature of each segment. The image retrieval is segment-based; the user can select a query segment to perform the retrieval and assign weights to the image features. The distance between two images is calculated using the distance between features of the constituent segments. Each image is ranked based on this distance with respect to the query image segment. The algorithm is applied to a pilot database of natural images and is shown to improve upon the conventional classification and retrieval methods. The proposed segmentation leads to a higher number of relevant images retrieved, 83.5% on average compared to 72.8 and 68.7% for the k-means clustering and the global retrieval methods, respectively.

A novel self-organizing map (SOM) based retrieval system is proposed for performing face matching in large database. The proposed system provides a small subset of faces that are most similar to a given query face, from which user can easily verify the matched images. The architecture of the proposed system consists of two major parts. First, the system provides a generalized integration of multiple feature-sets using multiple self-organizing maps. Multiple feature-sets are obtained from different feature extraction methods like Gabor filter, Local Autocorrelation Coefficients, etc. In this platform, multiple facial features are integrated to form a compressed feature vector without concerning scaling and length of individual feature set. Second, an SOM is trained to organize all the face images in a database through using the compressed feature vector. Using the organized map, similar faces to a query can be efficiently identified. Furthermore, the system includes a relevance feedback to enhance the face retrieval performance. The proposed method is computationally efficient. Comparative results show that the proposed approach is promising for identifying face in a given large image database.

BackgroundThere is increasing interest in the development of computational methods to analyze fluorescent microscopy images and enable automated large-scale analysis of the subcellular localization of proteins. Determining the subcellular localization is an integral part of identifying a protein's function, and the application of bioinformatics to this problem provides a valuable tool for the annotation of proteomes. Training and validating algorithms used in image analysis research typically rely on large sets of image data, and would benefit from a large, well-annotated and highly-available database of images and associated metadata.DescriptionThe Yeast Resource Center Public Image Repository (YRC PIR) is a large database of images depicting the subcellular localization and colocalization of proteins. Designed especially for computational biologists who need large numbers of images, the YRC PIR contains 532,182 TIFF images from nearly 85,000 separate experiments and their associated experimental data. All images and associated data are searchable, and the results browsable, through an intuitive web interface. Search results, experiments, individual images or the entire dataset may be downloaded as standards-compliant OME-TIFF data.ConclusionsThe YRC PIR is a powerful resource for researchers to find, view, and download many images and associated metadata depicting the subcellular localization and colocalization of proteins, or classes of proteins, in a standards-compliant format. The YRC PIR is freely available at http://images.yeastrc.org/.

Software testing is one of the most important Software Engineering processes, being the primary activity to check the conformance between the software requirements and its actual behavior. The automation of software testing activities is essential to certify productivity and effectiveness in such activities. Test automation leads testing activities to be conducted under systematic and accurate criteria, raising the chance of testers to reveal faults or inconsistencies. Test oracles are elementary members in software testing automation, being the mechanism responsible for indicating the correctness of software outputs. In testing environments, test oracles can be effectively implemented based on several sources of information about the Software Under Testing (SUT): software specifications, assertions, formal methods (Finite State Machines (FSM), formal specifications, etc, machine-learning methods, and metamorphic relations. Regardless of the implementation strategy, test oracles are vulnerable to false positive/negative verdicts, configuring what the literature describes as "the oracle problem". Therefore, test oracles are a non-trivial and challenging object of studies of the software engineering research area. SUT's outputs in unusual formats make it harder the oracle problem. Audio, images, three-dimensional objects, virtual reality environments, complex statistical compositions, etc, are examples of non-trivial output formats. In the software testing context, SUTs with unusual outputs can be called "complex-output systems". In this doctorate dissertation, we propose and evaluate a novel test oracle approach for complex-output systems called feature-based test oracles. The purpose of feature-based test oracles is the appropriation of a processing image technique called Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) to collect information from features extracted from the SUT's outputs to compose test oracles. Given a query image, CBIR combines feature extraction and similarity functions to alleviate the problem of searching for digital images in large databases. In previous research, we have integrated CBIR concepts in a testing framework to support the automation of testing activities in processing image systems and systems with Graphical User Interfaces (GUI). In this doctorate dissertation, we extended that framework and its concepts to general complex-output systems, addressing the feature-based test oracle approach. We use Text-To-Speech (TTS) systems to validate empirically our test oracle technique. Through the results of five empirical analyses, three of them conducted in line with problems of a real-world industry TTS system, show the proposed technique is a valuable instrument to automate testing activities and alleviate practitioners' efforts on testing complex output systems. We conclude the proposed test oracles are effective because they systematically evaluate the SUT's sensorial output rather than produce verdicts based on subjective specifications. As future work, we plan to conduct investigations towards the reduction of false positives/negatives and the association of the test oracles with machine learning techniques and metamorphic relations.

With the advancement of multimedia technology and the internet, numerous applications have arisen which require the storage and retrieval of large image and video databases. A novel method (Eigenwavelet) was developed to retrieve images from a large heterogeneous image database upon a user-specified query. The queries are in the form of an image(s) that the user seeks to find similar matches to in the database. Using the queries, an efficient algorithm was developed which decomposed each image in the database using wavelet packet analysis. Along each node of the packet tree, Principal Component Analysis was applied to the database images after wavelet packet decomposition, and a set of eigenvectors were generated for each node of the packet tree. To search the image database, the query images are projected onto these eigenvectors (Eigenwavelet coefficients). A distance metric is computed between the projections of the queries and the projections of the images in the database onto the eigenwavelets. Those images with minimal distance (L1) are retrieved in response to a unique query set. Simulations with a heterogeneous image database suggest the Eigenwavelet method of image retrieval is a robust and computationally tractable method of retrieving images with a probability of detection >.8.

The main objective of image browsers is to empower users to find a desired image with ease, speed and accuracy from a large database. In this paper we present a novel approach at creating an image browsing environment based on human perception with the aim of providing intuitive image navigation. In our approach, similarity judgments form the basic structural organization for the images in our browser. To enrich this we have developed a scalable crowd sourced method of augmenting a database with a large number of additional samples by capturing human judgments from members of a crowd. Experiments were conducted involving two databases that demonstrate the effectiveness of our method as an intuitive, fast browsing environment for large image databases.

Performing image retrieval in large image database is becoming popular with the development of multimedia technology. Recently, ISO/IEC moving pictures experts group (MPEG) drafts compact descriptors for visual search (CDVS) to support the related applications. The state-of-the-art feature selection strategy in CDVS adopts a priori relevance measure to guide the selection. However, this method ignores the gradient information of the described feature. In this paper, we adopt CDVS to address traffic vehicle search in large database. After detailedly analyzing to the local descriptor, we firstly define local descriptor distinctive degree based on the gradient quantity and the spatial gradient distribution energy of the feature. Then we propose our adaptive feature selection method by combing feature distinctive degree and the priori information. The proposed method is proven to be better than the standard algorithm in CDVS and it almost introduces 10% mean average precision (MAP) and top match rate increase in low bit rate mode.