Hashing for Similarity Search: A Survey

Similarity search (nearest neighbor search) is a problem of pursuing the data items whose distances to a query item are the smallest from a large database. Various methods have been developed to address this problem, and recently a lot of efforts have been devoted to approximate search. In this paper, we present a survey on one of the main solutions, hashing, which has been widely studied since the pioneering work locality sensitive hashing. We divide the hashing algorithms two main categories: locality sensitive hashing, which designs hash functions without exploring the data distribution and learning to hash, which learns hash functions according the data distribution, and review them from various aspects, including hash function design and distance measure and search scheme in the hash coding space

On the hardware implementation of the arithmetic elements of the pairwise orthogonal transform

The pairwise orthogonal transform (POT) is an attractive alternative to the Kahrunen-Loève transform for spectral decorrelation in on-board multispectral and hyperspectral image compression due to its reduced complexity. This work validates that the low complexity of the POT makes it feasible for a space-qualified field-programmable gate array (FPGA) implementation. A register transfer level description of the arithmetic elements of the POT is provided with the aim of achieving a low occupancy of resources and making it possible to synthesize the design on a space-qualified RTAX2000S and RTAX2000S-DSP. In order to accomplish these goals, the operations of the POT are fine-tuned such that their implementation footprint is minimized while providing equivalent coding performance. The most computationally demanding operations are solved by means of a lookup table. An additional contribution of this paper is a bit-exact description of the mathematical equations that are part of the transform, defined in such a way that they can be solved with integer arithmetic and implementations that can be easily cross-validated. Experimental results are presented, showing that it is feasible to implement the components of the POT on the mentioned FPGA

A Novel Rate-Controlled Predictive Coding Algorithm for Onboard Compression of Multispectral and Hyperspectral Images

Predictive compression has always been considered an attractive solution for onboard compression thanks to its low computational demands and the ability to accurately control quality on a pixel-by-pixel basis. Traditionally, predictive compression focused on the lossless and near-lossless modes of operation where the maximum error can be bounded but the rate of the compressed image is variable. Fixed-rate is considered a challenging problem due to the dependencies between quantization and prediction in the feedback loop, and the lack of a signal representation that packs the signals energy into few coefficients as in the case of transform coding. In this paper, we show how it is possible to design a rate control algorithm suitable for onboard implementation by providing a general framework to select quantizers in each spatial and spectral region of the image and optimize the choice so that the desired rate is achieved with the best quality. In order to make the computational complexity suitable for onboard implementation, models are used to predict the rate-distortion characteristics of the prediction residuals in each image block. Such models are trained on-the-fly during the execution and small deviations in the output rate due to unmodeled behavior are automatically corrected as new data are acquired. The coupling of predictive coding and rate control allows the design of a single compression algorithm able to manage multiple encoding objectives. We tailor the proposed rate controller to the predictor defined by the CCSDS-123 lossless compression recommendation and study a new entropy coding stage based on the range coder in order to achieve an extension of the standard capable of managing all the following encoding objectives: lossless, variable-rate near-lossless (bounded maximum error), fixed-rate lossy (minimum average error), and any in-between case such as fixed-rate coding with a constraint on the maximum error. We show the performance of the proposed architecture on the CCSDS reference dataset for multispectral and hyperspectral image compression and compare it with state-of-the-art techniques based on transform coding such as the use of the CCSDS-122 Discrete Wavelet Transform encoder paired with the Pairwise Orthogonal Transform working in the spectral dimension. Remarkable results are observed by providing superior image quality both in terms of higher SNR and lower maximum error with respect to state-of-the-art transform coding

Reconstructive Sparse Code Transfer for Contour Detection and Semantic Labeling

We frame the task of predicting a semantic labeling as a sparse reconstruction procedure that applies a target-specific learned transfer function to a generic deep sparse code representation of an image. This strategy partitions training into two distinct stages. First, in an unsupervised manner, we learn a set of generic dictionaries optimized for sparse coding of image patches. We train a multilayer representation via recursive sparse dictionary learning on pooled codes output by earlier layers. Second, we encode all training images with the generic dictionaries and learn a transfer function that optimizes reconstruction of patches extracted from annotated ground-truth given the sparse codes of their corresponding image patches. At test time, we encode a novel image using the generic dictionaries and then reconstruct using the transfer function. The output reconstruction is a semantic labeling of the test image. Applying this strategy to the task of contour detection, we demonstrate performance competitive with state-of-the-art systems. Unlike almost all prior work, our approach obviates the need for any form of hand-designed features or filters. To illustrate general applicability, we also show initial results on semantic part labeling of human faces. The effectiveness of our approach opens new avenues for research on deep sparse representations. Our classifiers utilize this representation in a novel manner. Rather than acting on nodes in the deepest layer, they attach to nodes along a slice through multiple layers of the network in order to make predictions about local patches. Our flexible combination of a generatively learned sparse representation with discriminatively trained transfer classifiers extends the notion of sparse reconstruction to encompass arbitrary semantic labeling tasks.Comment: to appear in Asian Conference on Computer Vision (ACCV), 201

Fast Autocorrelated Context Models for Data Compression

A method is presented to automatically generate context models of data by calculating the data's autocorrelation function. The largest values of the autocorrelation function occur at the offsets or lags in the bitstream which tend to be the most highly correlated to any particular location. These offsets are ideal for use in predictive coding, such as predictive partial match (PPM) or context-mixing algorithms for data compression, making such algorithms more efficient and more general by reducing or eliminating the need for ad-hoc models based on particular types of data. Instead of using the definition of the autocorrelation function, which considers the pairwise correlations of data requiring O(n^2) time, the Weiner-Khinchin theorem is applied, quickly obtaining the autocorrelation as the inverse Fast Fourier transform of the data's power spectrum in O(n log n) time, making the technique practical for the compression of large data objects. The method is shown to produce the highest levels of performance obtained to date on a lossless image compression benchmark.Comment: v2 includes bibliograph

A Novel Rate Control Algorithm for Onboard Predictive Coding of Multispectral and Hyperspectral Images

Predictive coding is attractive for compression onboard of spacecrafts thanks to its low computational complexity, modest memory requirements and the ability to accurately control quality on a pixel-by-pixel basis. Traditionally, predictive compression focused on the lossless and near-lossless modes of operation where the maximum error can be bounded but the rate of the compressed image is variable. Rate control is considered a challenging problem for predictive encoders due to the dependencies between quantization and prediction in the feedback loop, and the lack of a signal representation that packs the signal's energy into few coefficients. In this paper, we show that it is possible to design a rate control scheme intended for onboard implementation. In particular, we propose a general framework to select quantizers in each spatial and spectral region of an image so as to achieve the desired target rate while minimizing distortion. The rate control algorithm allows to achieve lossy, near-lossless compression, and any in-between type of compression, e.g., lossy compression with a near-lossless constraint. While this framework is independent of the specific predictor used, in order to show its performance, in this paper we tailor it to the predictor adopted by the CCSDS-123 lossless compression standard, obtaining an extension that allows to perform lossless, near-lossless and lossy compression in a single package. We show that the rate controller has excellent performance in terms of accuracy in the output rate, rate-distortion characteristics and is extremely competitive with respect to state-of-the-art transform coding