Efficient region-based image retrieval

Region-based image retrieval (RBIR) was recently proposed as an extension of content-based image retrieval (CBIR). An RBIR system automatically segments images into a vari-able number of regions, and extracts for each region a set of features. Then, a dissimilarity function determines the distance between a database image and a set of reference regions. Unfortunately, the large evaluation costs of the dis-similarity function are restricting RBIR to relatively small databases. In this paper, we apply a multi-step approach to enable region-based techniques for large image collections. We provide cheap lower and upper bounding distance func-tions for a recently proposed dissimilarity measure. As our experiments show, these bounding functions are so tight, that we have to evaluate the expensive distance function for less than 0.5 % of the images. For a typical image database with more than 370,000 images, our multi-step approach improved retrieval performance by a factor of more than 5 compared to the currently fastest methods

Real-Time Implementation and Performance Optimization of Local Derivative Pattern Algorithm on GPUs

Pattern based texture descriptors are widely used in Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) for efficient retrieval of matching images. Local Derivative Pattern (LDP), a higher order local pattern operator, originally proposed for face recognition, encodes the distinctive spatial relationships contained in a local region of an image as the feature vector. LDP efficiently extracts finer details and provides efficient retrieval however, it was proposed for images of limited resolution. Over the period of time the development in the digital image sensors had paid way for capturing images at a very high resolution. LDP algorithm though very efficient in content-based image retrieval did not scale well when capturing features from such high-resolution images as it becomes computationally very expensive. This paper proposes how to efficiently extract parallelism from the LDP algorithm and strategies for optimally implementing it by exploiting some inherent General-Purpose Graphics Processing Unit (GPGPU) characteristics. By optimally configuring the GPGPU kernels, image retrieval was performed at a much faster rate. The LDP algorithm was ported on to Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) supported GPGPU and a maximum speed up of around 240x was achieved as compared to its sequential counterpart

Query Region Determination based on Region Importance Index and Relative Position for Region-based Image Retrieval

An efficient Region-Based Image Retrieval (RBIR) system must consider query region determination techniques and target regions in the retrieval process. A query region is a region that must contain a Region of Interest (ROI) or saliency region. A query region determination can be specified manually or automatically. However, manual determination is considered less efficient and tedious for users. The selected query region must determine specific target regions in the image collection to reduce the retrieval time. This study proposes a strategy of query region determination based on the Region Importance Index (RII) value and relative position of the Saliency Region Overlapping Block (SROB) to produce a more efficient RBIR. The entire region is formed by using the mean shift segmentation method. The RII value is calculated based on a percentage of the region area and region distance to the center of the image. Whereas the target regions are determined by considering the relative position of SROB, the performance of the proposed method is tested on a CorelDB dataset. Experimental results show that the proposed method can reduce the Average of Retrieval Time to 0.054 seconds with a 5x5 block size configuration

Sparse Coding for Event Tracking and Image Retrieval

Comparing regions of images is a fundamental task in both similarity based object tracking as well as retrieval of images from image datasets, where an exemplar image is used as the query. In this thesis, we focus on the task of creating a method of comparison for images produced by NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory mission. This mission has been in operation for several years and produces almost 700 Gigabytes of data per day from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly instrument alone. This has created a massive repository of high-quality solar images to analyze and categorize. To this end, we are concerned with the creation of image region descriptors that are selective enough to differentiate between highly similar images yet compact enough to be compared in an efficient manner, while also being indexable with current indexing technology. We produce such descriptors by pooling sparse coding vectors produced by spanning learned basis dictionaries. Various pooled vectors are used to describe regions of images in event tracking, entire image descriptors for image comparison in content based image retrieval, and as region descriptors to be used in a content based image retrieval system on the SDO AIA image pipeline

Comparative Study and Optimization of Feature-Extraction Techniques for Content based Image Retrieval

The aim of a Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) system, also known as Query by Image Content (QBIC), is to help users to retrieve relevant images based on their contents. CBIR technologies provide a method to find images in large databases by using unique descriptors from a trained image. The image descriptors include texture, color, intensity and shape of the object inside an image. Several feature-extraction techniques viz., Average RGB, Color Moments, Co-occurrence, Local Color Histogram, Global Color Histogram and Geometric Moment have been critically compared in this paper. However, individually these techniques result in poor performance. So, combinations of these techniques have also been evaluated and results for the most efficient combination of techniques have been presented and optimized for each class of image query. We also propose an improvement in image retrieval performance by introducing the idea of Query modification through image cropping. It enables the user to identify a region of interest and modify the initial query to refine and personalize the image retrieval results.Comment: 8 pages, 16 figures, 11 table

Salient region detection using contrast-based saliency and watershed segmentation

Salient region detection is useful for many applications such as image segmentation, compression, image retrieval, object tracking, and machine vision systems.In this paper, an approach to detect salient regions in a visual scene using contrast-based saliency and watershed segmentation is presented.The approach allows salient objects to be detected and extracted for analysis while preserving the actual boundaries of the salient objects. The approach can be executed in parallel making it efficient for real time applications