Fine-grained sketch-based image retrieval by matching deformable part models

(c) 2014. The copyright of this document resides with its authors. It may be distributed unchanged freely in print or electronic forms.© 2014. The copyright of this document resides with its authors. An important characteristic of sketches, compared with text, rests with their ability to intrinsically capture object appearance and structure. Nonetheless, akin to traditional text-based image retrieval, conventional sketch-based image retrieval (SBIR) principally focuses on retrieving images of the same category, neglecting the fine-grained characteristics of sketches. In this paper, we advocate the expressiveness of sketches and examine their efficacy under a novel fine-grained SBIR framework. In particular, we study how sketches enable fine-grained retrieval within object categories. Key to this problem is introducing a mid-level sketch representation that not only captures object pose, but also possesses the ability to traverse sketch and image domains. Specifically, we learn deformable part-based model (DPM) as a mid-level representation to discover and encode the various poses in sketch and image domains independently, after which graph matching is performed on DPMs to establish pose correspondences across the two domains. We further propose an SBIR dataset that covers the unique aspects of fine-grained SBIR. Through in-depth experiments, we demonstrate the superior performance of our SBIR framework, and showcase its unique ability in fine-grained retrieval

Structured Knowledge Representation for Image Retrieval

We propose a structured approach to the problem of retrieval of images by content and present a description logic that has been devised for the semantic indexing and retrieval of images containing complex objects. As other approaches do, we start from low-level features extracted with image analysis to detect and characterize regions in an image. However, in contrast with feature-based approaches, we provide a syntax to describe segmented regions as basic objects and complex objects as compositions of basic ones. Then we introduce a companion extensional semantics for defining reasoning services, such as retrieval, classification, and subsumption. These services can be used for both exact and approximate matching, using similarity measures. Using our logical approach as a formal specification, we implemented a complete client-server image retrieval system, which allows a user to pose both queries by sketch and queries by example. A set of experiments has been carried out on a testbed of images to assess the retrieval capabilities of the system in comparison with expert users ranking. Results are presented adopting a well-established measure of quality borrowed from textual information retrieval

Supporting Knitwear Design Using Case-Based Reasoning

Organised by: Cranfield UniversityKnitwear design is a creative activity that is hard to automate using the computer. The production of the associated knitting pattern, however, is repetitive, time-consuming and error-prone, calling for automation. Our objectives are two-fold: to facilitate the design and to ease the burden of calculations and checks in pattern production. We conduct a feasibility study for applying case-based reasoning in knitwear design: we describe appropriate methods and show how they can be implemented.Mori Seiki – The Machine Tool Compan

Towards a Tool for Teaching Geometry to Children

An approach for a query-by-sketch system on qualitative shape information for image retrieval in databases is proposed and evaluated. The use of qualitative methods for shape description allows the gathering of semantic information from the sketches. The qualitative description and recognition of sketches are evaluated in order to verify that it is possible to use the proposed qualitative method for the development of a learning application for children

Data-Driven Shape Analysis and Processing

Data-driven methods play an increasingly important role in discovering geometric, structural, and semantic relationships between 3D shapes in collections, and applying this analysis to support intelligent modeling, editing, and visualization of geometric data. In contrast to traditional approaches, a key feature of data-driven approaches is that they aggregate information from a collection of shapes to improve the analysis and processing of individual shapes. In addition, they are able to learn models that reason about properties and relationships of shapes without relying on hard-coded rules or explicitly programmed instructions. We provide an overview of the main concepts and components of these techniques, and discuss their application to shape classification, segmentation, matching, reconstruction, modeling and exploration, as well as scene analysis and synthesis, through reviewing the literature and relating the existing works with both qualitative and numerical comparisons. We conclude our report with ideas that can inspire future research in data-driven shape analysis and processing.Comment: 10 pages, 19 figure