Digital Image Access & Retrieval

The 33th Annual Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing, held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in March of 1996, addressed the theme of "Digital Image Access & Retrieval." The papers from this conference cover a wide range of topics concerning digital imaging technology for visual resource collections. Papers covered three general areas: (1) systems, planning, and implementation; (2) automatic and semi-automatic indexing; and (3) preservation with the bulk of the conference focusing on indexing and retrieval.published or submitted for publicatio

Giving eyes to ICT!, or How does a computer recognize a cow?

Het door Schouten en andere onderzoekers op het CWI ontwikkelde systeem berust op het beschrijven van beelden met behulp van fractale meetkunde. De menselijke waarneming blijkt mede daardoor zo efficiënt omdat zij sterk werkt met gelijkenissen. Het ligt dus voor de hand het te zoeken in wiskundige methoden die dat ook doen. Schouten heeft daarom beeldcodering met behulp van 'fractals' onderzocht. Fractals zijn zelfgelijkende meetkundige figuren, opgebouwd door herhaalde transformatie (iteratie) van een eenvoudig basispatroon, dat zich daardoor op steeds kleinere schalen vertakt. Op elk niveau van detaillering lijkt een fractal op zichzelf (Droste-effect). Met fractals kan men vrij eenvoudig bedrieglijk echte natuurvoorstellingen maken. Fractale beeldcodering gaat ervan uit dat het omgekeerde ook geldt: een beeld effectief opslaan in de vorm van de basispatronen van een klein aantal fractals, samen met het voorschrift hoe het oorspronkelijke beeld daaruit te reconstrueren. Het op het CWI in samenwerking met onderzoekers uit Leuven ontwikkelde systeem is mede gebaseerd op deze methode. ISBN 906196502

Saliency for Image Description and Retrieval

We live in a world where we are surrounded by ever increasing numbers of images. More often than not, these images have very little metadata by which they can be indexed and searched. In order to avoid information overload, techniques need to be developed to enable these image collections to be searched by their content. Much of the previous work on image retrieval has used global features such as colour and texture to describe the content of the image. However, these global features are insufficient to accurately describe the image content when different parts of the image have different characteristics. This thesis initially discusses how this problem can be circumvented by using salient interest regions to select the areas of the image that are most interesting and generate local descriptors to describe the image characteristics in that region. The thesis discusses a number of different saliency detectors that are suitable for robust retrieval purposes and performs a comparison between a number of these region detectors. The thesis then discusses how salient regions can be used for image retrieval using a number of techniques, but most importantly, two techniques inspired from the field of textual information retrieval. Using these robust retrieval techniques, a new paradigm in image retrieval is discussed, whereby the retrieval takes place on a mobile device using a query image captured by a built-in camera. This paradigm is demonstrated in the context of an art gallery, in which the device can be used to find more information about particular images. The final chapter of the thesis discusses some approaches to bridging the semantic gap in image retrieval. The chapter explores ways in which un-annotated image collections can be searched by keyword. Two techniques are discussed; the first explicitly attempts to automatically annotate the un-annotated images so that the automatically applied annotations can be used for searching. The second approach does not try to explicitly annotate images, but rather, through the use of linear algebra, it attempts to create a semantic space in which images and keywords are positioned such that images are close to the keywords that represent them within the space

Features for matching people in different views

There have been significant advances in the computer vision field during the last decade. During this period, many methods have been developed that have been successful in solving challenging problems including Face Detection, Object Recognition and 3D Scene Reconstruction. The solutions developed by computer vision researchers have been widely adopted and used in many real-life applications such as those faced in the medical and security industry. Among the different branches of computer vision, Object Recognition has been an area that has advanced rapidly in recent years. The successful introduction of approaches such as feature extraction and description has been an important factor in the growth of this area. In recent years, researchers have attempted to use these approaches and apply them to other problems such as Content Based Image Retrieval and Tracking. In this work, we present a novel system that finds correspondences between people seen in different images. Unlike other approaches that rely on a video stream to track the movement of people between images, here we present a feature-based approach where we locate a target’s new location in an image, based only on its visual appearance. Our proposed system comprises three steps. In the first step, a set of features is extracted from the target’s appearance. A novel algorithm is developed that allows extraction of features from a target that is particularly suitable to the modelling task. In the second step, each feature is characterised using a combined colour and texture descriptor. Inclusion of information relating to both colour and texture of a feature add to the descriptor’s distinctiveness. Finally, the target’s appearance and pose is modelled as a collection of such features and descriptors. This collection is then used as a template that allows us to search for a similar combination of features in other images that correspond to the target’s new location. We have demonstrated the effectiveness of our system in locating a target’s new position in an image, despite differences in viewpoint, scale or elapsed time between the images. The characterisation of a target as a collection of features also allows our system to robustly deal with the partial occlusion of the target

Saliency-weighted graphs for efficient visual content description and their applications in real-time image retrieval systems

YesThe exponential growth in the volume of digital image databases is making it increasingly difficult to retrieve relevant information from them. Efficient retrieval systems require distinctive features extracted from visually rich contents, represented semantically in a human perception-oriented manner. This paper presents an efficient framework to model image contents as an undirected attributed relational graph, exploiting color, texture, layout, and saliency information. The proposed method encodes salient features into this rich representative model without requiring any segmentation or clustering procedures, reducing the computational complexity. In addition, an efficient graph-matching procedure implemented on specialized hardware makes it more suitable for real-time retrieval applications. The proposed framework has been tested on three publicly available datasets, and the results prove its superiority in terms of both effectiveness and efficiency in comparison with other state-of-the-art schemes.Supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (2013R1A1A2012904)

CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research

Contributions to the Content-Based Image Retrieval Using Pictorial Queris

L'accés massiu a les càmeres digitals, els ordinadors personals i a Internet, ha propiciat la creació de grans volums de dades en format digital. En aquest context, cada vegada adquireixen major rellevància totes aquelles eines dissenyades per organitzar la informació i facilitar la seva cerca.Les imatges són un cas particular de dades que requereixen tècniques específiques de descripció i indexació. L'àrea de la visió per computador encarregada de l'estudi d'aquestes tècniques rep el nom de Recuperació d'Imatges per Contingut, en anglès Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR). Els sistemes de CBIR no utilitzen descripcions basades en text sinó que es basen en característiques extretes de les pròpies imatges. En contrast a les més de 6000 llengües parlades en el món, les descripcions basades en característiques visuals representen una via d'expressió universal.La intensa recerca en el camp dels sistemes de CBIR s'ha aplicat en àrees de coneixement molt diverses. Així doncs s'han desenvolupat aplicacions de CBIR relacionades amb la medicina, la protecció de la propietat intel·lectual, el periodisme, el disseny gràfic, la cerca d'informació en Internet, la preservació dels patrimoni cultural, etc. Un dels punts importants d'una aplicació de CBIR resideix en el disseny de les funcions de l'usuari. L'usuari és l'encarregat de formular les consultes a partir de les quals es fa la cerca de les imatges. Nosaltres hem centrat l'atenció en aquells sistemes en què la consulta es formula a partir d'una representació pictòrica. Hem plantejat una taxonomia dels sistemes de consulta en composada per quatre paradigmes diferents: Consulta-segons-Selecció, Consulta-segons-Composició-Icònica, Consulta-segons-Esboç i Consulta-segons-Il·lustració. Cada paradigma incorpora un nivell diferent en el potencial expressiu de l'usuari. Des de la simple selecció d'una imatge, fins a la creació d'una il·lustració en color, l'usuari és qui pren el control de les dades d'entrada del sistema. Al llarg dels capítols d'aquesta tesi hem analitzat la influència que cada paradigma de consulta exerceix en els processos interns d'un sistema de CBIR. D'aquesta manera també hem proposat un conjunt de contribucions que hem exemplificat des d'un punt de vista pràctic mitjançant una aplicació final