1,436 research outputs found
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
Next Generation of Product Search and Discovery
Online shopping has become an important part of people’s daily life with the rapid development of e-commerce. In some domains such as books, electronics, and CD/DVDs, online shopping has surpassed or even replaced the traditional shopping method. Compared with traditional retailing, e-commerce is information intensive. One of the key factors to succeed in e-business is how to facilitate the consumers’ approaches to discover a product. Conventionally a product search engine based on a keyword search or category browser is provided to help users find the product information they need. The general goal of a product search system is to enable users to quickly locate information of interest and to minimize users’ efforts in search and navigation. In this process human factors play a significant role. Finding product information could be a tricky task and may require an intelligent use of search engines, and a non-trivial navigation of multilayer categories. Searching for useful product information can be frustrating for many users, especially those inexperienced users.
This dissertation focuses on developing a new visual product search system that effectively extracts the properties of unstructured products, and presents the possible items of attraction to users so that the users can quickly locate the ones they would be most likely interested in. We designed and developed a feature extraction algorithm that retains product color and local pattern features, and the experimental evaluation on the benchmark dataset demonstrated that it is robust against common geometric and photometric visual distortions. Besides, instead of ignoring product text information, we investigated and developed a ranking model learned via a unified probabilistic hypergraph that is capable of capturing correlations among product visual content and textual content. Moreover, we proposed and designed a fuzzy hierarchical co-clustering algorithm for the collaborative filtering product recommendation. Via this method, users can be automatically grouped into different interest communities based on their behaviors. Then, a customized recommendation can be performed according to these implicitly detected relations. In summary, the developed search system performs much better in a visual unstructured product search when compared with state-of-art approaches. With the comprehensive ranking scheme and the collaborative filtering recommendation module, the user’s overhead in locating the information of value is reduced, and the user’s experience of seeking for useful product information is optimized
Spherical harmonics coeffcients for ligand-based virtual screening of cyclooxygenase inhibitors
Background: Molecular descriptors are essential for many applications in computational chemistry, such as ligand-based similarity searching. Spherical harmonics have previously been suggested as comprehensive descriptors of molecular structure and properties. We investigate a spherical harmonics descriptor for shape-based virtual screening. Methodology/Principal Findings: We introduce and validate a partially rotation-invariant three-dimensional molecular shape descriptor based on the norm of spherical harmonics expansion coefficients. Using this molecular representation, we parameterize molecular surfaces, i.e., isosurfaces of spatial molecular property distributions. We validate the shape descriptor in a comprehensive retrospective virtual screening experiment. In a prospective study, we virtually screen a large compound library for cyclooxygenase inhibitors, using a self-organizing map as a pre-filter and the shape descriptor for candidate prioritization. Conclusions/Significance: 12 compounds were tested in vitro for direct enzyme inhibition and in a whole blood assay. Active compounds containing a triazole scaffold were identified as direct cyclooxygenase-1 inhibitors. This outcome corroborates the usefulness of spherical harmonics for representation of molecular shape in virtual screening of large compound collections. The combination of pharmacophore and shape-based filtering of screening candidates proved to be a straightforward approach to finding novel bioactive chemotypes with minimal experimental effort
Review of Person Re-identification Techniques
Person re-identification across different surveillance cameras with disjoint
fields of view has become one of the most interesting and challenging subjects
in the area of intelligent video surveillance. Although several methods have
been developed and proposed, certain limitations and unresolved issues remain.
In all of the existing re-identification approaches, feature vectors are
extracted from segmented still images or video frames. Different similarity or
dissimilarity measures have been applied to these vectors. Some methods have
used simple constant metrics, whereas others have utilised models to obtain
optimised metrics. Some have created models based on local colour or texture
information, and others have built models based on the gait of people. In
general, the main objective of all these approaches is to achieve a
higher-accuracy rate and lowercomputational costs. This study summarises
several developments in recent literature and discusses the various available
methods used in person re-identification. Specifically, their advantages and
disadvantages are mentioned and compared.Comment: Published 201
Autoencoding the Retrieval Relevance of Medical Images
Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) of medical images is a crucial task that
can contribute to a more reliable diagnosis if applied to big data. Recent
advances in feature extraction and classification have enormously improved CBIR
results for digital images. However, considering the increasing accessibility
of big data in medical imaging, we are still in need of reducing both memory
requirements and computational expenses of image retrieval systems. This work
proposes to exclude the features of image blocks that exhibit a low encoding
error when learned by a autoencoder (). We examine the
histogram of autoendcoding errors of image blocks for each image class to
facilitate the decision which image regions, or roughly what percentage of an
image perhaps, shall be declared relevant for the retrieval task. This leads to
reduction of feature dimensionality and speeds up the retrieval process. To
validate the proposed scheme, we employ local binary patterns (LBP) and support
vector machines (SVM) which are both well-established approaches in CBIR
research community. As well, we use IRMA dataset with 14,410 x-ray images as
test data. The results show that the dimensionality of annotated feature
vectors can be reduced by up to 50% resulting in speedups greater than 27% at
expense of less than 1% decrease in the accuracy of retrieval when validating
the precision and recall of the top 20 hits.Comment: To appear in proceedings of The 5th International Conference on Image
Processing Theory, Tools and Applications (IPTA'15), Nov 10-13, 2015,
Orleans, Franc
Deformable Prototypes for Encoding Shape Categories in Image Databases
We describe a method for shape-based image database search that uses deformable prototypes to represent categories. Rather than directly comparing a candidate shape with all shape entries in the database, shapes are compared in terms of the types of nonrigid deformations (differences) that relate them to a small subset of representative prototypes. To solve the shape correspondence and alignment problem, we employ the technique of modal matching, an information-preserving shape decomposition for matching, describing, and comparing shapes despite sensor variations and nonrigid deformations. In modal matching, shape is decomposed into an ordered basis of orthogonal principal components. We demonstrate the utility of this approach for shape comparison in 2-D image databases.Office of Naval Research (Young Investigator Award N00014-06-1-0661
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