Efficient image copy detection using multi-scale fingerprints

Inspired by multi-resolution histogram, we propose a multi-scale SIFT descriptor to improve the discriminability. A series of SIFT descriptions with different scale are first acquired by varying the actual size of each spatial bin. Then principle component analysis (PCA) is employed to reduce them to low dimensional vectors, which are further combined into one 128-dimension multi-scale SIFT description. Next, an entropy maximization based binarization is employed to encode the descriptions into binary codes called fingerprints for indexing the local features. Furthermore, an efficient search architecture consisting of lookup tables and inverted image ID list is designed to improve the query speed. Since the fingerprint building is of low-complexity, this method is very efficient and scalable to very large databases. In addition, the multi-scale fingerprints are very discriminative such that the copies can be effectively distinguished from similar objects, which leads to an improved performance in the detection of copies. The experimental evaluation shows that our approach outperforms the state of the art methods.Inspired by multi-resolution histogram, we propose a multi-scale SIFT descriptor to improve the discriminability. A series of SIFT descriptions with different scale are first acquired by varying the actual size of each spatial bin. Then principle component analysis (PCA) is employed to reduce them to low dimensional vectors, which are further combined into one 128-dimension multi-scale SIFT description. Next, an entropy maximization based binarization is employed to encode the descriptions into binary codes called fingerprints for indexing the local features. Furthermore, an efficient search architecture consisting of lookup tables and inverted image ID list is designed to improve the query speed. Since the fingerprint building is of low-complexity, this method is very efficient and scalable to very large databases. In addition, the multi-scale fingerprints are very discriminative such that the copies can be effectively distinguished from similar objects, which leads to an improved performance in the detection of copies. The experimental evaluation shows that our approach outperforms the state of the art methods

Enhancing the effectiveness of ligand-based virtual screening using data fusion

Data fusion is being increasingly used to combine the outputs of different types of sensor. This paper reviews the application of the approach to ligand-based virtual screening, where the sensors to be combined are functions that score molecules in a database on their likelihood of exhibiting some required biological activity. Much of the literature to date involves the combination of multiple similarity searches, although there is also increasing interest in the combination of multiple machine learning techniques. Both approaches are reviewed here, focusing on the extent to which fusion can improve the effectiveness of searching when compared with a single screening mechanism, and on the reasons that have been suggested for the observed performance enhancement

Improving k-nn search and subspace clustering based on local intrinsic dimensionality

In several novel applications such as multimedia and recommender systems, data is often represented as object feature vectors in high-dimensional spaces. The high-dimensional data is always a challenge for state-of-the-art algorithms, because of the so-called curse of dimensionality . As the dimensionality increases, the discriminative ability of similarity measures diminishes to the point where many data analysis algorithms, such as similarity search and clustering, that depend on them lose their effectiveness. One way to handle this challenge is by selecting the most important features, which is essential for providing compact object representations as well as improving the overall search and clustering performance. Having compact feature vectors can further reduce the storage space and the computational complexity of search and learning tasks. Support-Weighted Intrinsic Dimensionality (support-weighted ID) is a new promising feature selection criterion that estimates the contribution of each feature to the overall intrinsic dimensionality. Support-weighted ID identifies relevant features locally for each object, and penalizes those features that have locally lower discriminative power as well as higher density. In fact, support-weighted ID measures the ability of each feature to locally discriminate between objects in the dataset. Based on support-weighted ID, this dissertation introduces three main research contributions: First, this dissertation proposes NNWID-Descent, a similarity graph construction method that utilizes the support-weighted ID criterion to identify and retain relevant features locally for each object and enhance the overall graph quality. Second, with the aim to improve the accuracy and performance of cluster analysis, this dissertation introduces k-LIDoids, a subspace clustering algorithm that extends the utility of support-weighted ID within a clustering framework in order to gradually select the subset of informative and important features per cluster. k-LIDoids is able to construct clusters together with finding a low dimensional subspace for each cluster. Finally, using the compact object and cluster representations from NNWID-Descent and k-LIDoids, this dissertation defines LID-Fingerprint, a new binary fingerprinting and multi-level indexing framework for the high-dimensional data. LID-Fingerprint can be used for hiding the information as a way of preventing passive adversaries as well as providing an efficient and secure similarity search and retrieval for the data stored on the cloud. When compared to other state-of-the-art algorithms, the good practical performance provides an evidence for the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms for the data in high-dimensional spaces

DJ-MC: A Reinforcement-Learning Agent for Music Playlist Recommendation

In recent years, there has been growing focus on the study of automated recommender systems. Music recommendation systems serve as a prominent domain for such works, both from an academic and a commercial perspective. A fundamental aspect of music perception is that music is experienced in temporal context and in sequence. In this work we present DJ-MC, a novel reinforcement-learning framework for music recommendation that does not recommend songs individually but rather song sequences, or playlists, based on a model of preferences for both songs and song transitions. The model is learned online and is uniquely adapted for each listener. To reduce exploration time, DJ-MC exploits user feedback to initialize a model, which it subsequently updates by reinforcement. We evaluate our framework with human participants using both real song and playlist data. Our results indicate that DJ-MC's ability to recommend sequences of songs provides a significant improvement over more straightforward approaches, which do not take transitions into account.Comment: -Updated to the most recent and completed version (to be presented at AAMAS 2015) -Updated author list. in Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS) 2015, Istanbul, Turkey, May 201