Multimedia retrieval systems are very important today with millions of content creators all over the world generating huge multimedia archives. Recent developments allows for content based image and video retrieval. These methods are often quite slow, especially if applied on a library of millions of media items. In this research a novel image retrieval method is proposed, which utilizes spatial metadata on images. By finding clusters of images based on their geographic location, the spatial metadata, and combining this information with existing content- based image retrieval algorithms, the proposed method enables efficient presentation of high quality image retrieval results to system users. Clustering methods considered include Vector Quantization, Vector Quantization LBG and DBSCAN. Clustering was performed on three different similarity measures; spatial metadata, histogram similarity or texture similarity. For histogram similarity there are many different distance metrics to use when comparing histograms. Euclidean, Quadratic Form and Earth Mover’s Distance was studied. As well as three different color spaces; RGB, HSV and CIE Lab.

This essay explores to what extent the Swedish language version of Google Images meets the usability requirements of average everyday users. Previously published studies on user behaviour and users‟ interface and search option preferences define the usability requirements, which are matched against Google Images‟ actual interface and search options. The retrieval method of Google Images is also briefly discussed, and users‟ opinions about Google Images too, as they come across in the previously published user studies. The findings are that Google Images lack some of the things that users ask for, but it still seems to be the most used image search engine among average internet users and more appreciated than other search engines. Since the user studies were conducted, Google Images has changed its interface and added new options in a way that indicates that the developers have read and taken inspiration from the user-oriented image retrieval research, and still do so. This should mean that Google Images is even more user-oriented and therefore appreciated today, and it might improve even more in the near future.

As advances of information technology, engineering consulting firms have gradually digitalized their documents and line-drawing images. Such digital libraries greatly facilitate document retrievals. However, engineers still face a challenging issue: searches and retrievals of line-drawing images in a digital library. With a small number of line-drawing images in a digital library, engineers can browse thumbnails for locating relevant images. As the number of line-drawing images increases, the manual browsing process is time-consuming and frustrated. In response to the need and importance of supporting efficient and effective retrieval of line-drawing images, this thesis aims to develop a line-drawing image retrieval system. Typically, a line-drawing image within an engineering document is associated with surrounding text for description or illustration purpose. Such surrounding text provides important information for automatically indexing the line-drawing image. With extracted indexes (or keywords), retrieval of line-drawing images can be accomplished using a traditional information retrieval technique. Specifically, in this study, we propose a line-drawing image retrieval system based on surrounding text. We develop four models for defining surrounding text boundaries for line-drawing images. Furthermore, two information retrieval techniques (one with and one without query expansion) are implemented and evaluated. According to our empirical evaluations, the surrounding text boundary model with image caption together with three sentences (preceding, image anchoring, and successive sentences) would result in the best retrieval effectiveness, as measured by recall and precision rates.

The objective of the present work is to employ a multiple-instance learning image retrieval system by incorporating a spatial similarity measure. Multiple-Instance learning is a way of modeling ambiguity in supervised learning given multiple examples. From a small collection of positive and negative example images, semantically relevant concepts can be derived automatically and employed to retrieve images from an image database. The degree of similarity between two spatial relations is linked to the distance between the associated nodes in an Interval Neighbor Group (ING). The shorter the distance, the higher degree of similarity, while a longer one, a lower degree of similarity. Once all the pairwise similarity values are derived, an ensemble similarity measure will then integrate these pairwise similarity assessments and give an overall similarity value between two images. Therefore, images in a database can be quantitatively ranked according to the degree of ensemble similarity with the query image. Similarity retrieval method evaluates the ensemble similarity based on the spatial relations and common objects present in the maximum common subimage between the query and a database image are considered. Therefore, reliable spatial relation features extracted from the image, combined with a multiple-instance learning paradigm to derive relevant concepts, can produce desirable retrieval results that better match user¡¦s expectation. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach, two sets of test for querying an image database are performed, namely, the proposed RSS-ING scheme v.s. 2D Be-string similarity method, and single-instance vs. multiple-instance learning. The performance in terms of similarity curves, execution time and memory space requirement show favorably for the proposed multiple-instance spatial similarity-based approach.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 82-87).

O avanço tecnológico atual está permitindo que as pessoas recebam cada vez mais informações visuais dos mais diferentes tipos, nas mais variadas mídias. Esse aumento fantástico está obrigando os pesquisadores e as indústrias a imaginar soluções para o armazenamento e recuperação deste tipo de informação, pois nossos computadores ainda utilizam, apesar dos grandes avanços nessa área, um sistema de arquivos imaginado há décadas, quando era natural trabalhar com informações meramente textuais. Agora, nos deparamos com novos problemas: Como encontrar uma paisagem específica em um banco de imagens, em que trecho de um filme aparece um cavalo sobre uma colina, em que parte da fotografia existe um gato, como fazer um robô localizar um objeto em uma cena, entre outras necessidades. O objetivo desse trabalho é propor uma arquitetura de rede neural artificial que permita o reconhecimento de objetos genéricos e de categorias em banco de imagens digitais, de forma que se possa recuperar imagens específicas a partir da descrição da cena fornecida pelo usuário. Para que esse objetivo fosse alcançado, foram utilizadas técnicas de Visão Computacional e Processamento de Imagens na etapa de extração de feições de baixo nível e de Redes Neurais(Mapas Auto-Organizáveis de Kohonen) na etapa de agrupamento de classes de objetos. O resultado final desse trabalho pretende ser um embrião para um sistema de reconhecimento de objetos mais genérico, que possa ser estendido para a criação de indices de forma automática ou semi-automática em grandes bancos de imagens. / The current technological progress allows people to receive more and more visual information of the most different types, in different medias. This huge augmentation of image availability forces researchers and industries to propose efficient solutions for image storage and recovery. Despite the extraordinary advances in computational power, the data files system remain the same for decades, when it was natural to deal only with textual information. Nowadays, new problems are in front of us in this field. For instance, how can we find an specific landscape in a image database, in which place of a movie there is a horse on a hill, in which part of a photographic picture there is a cat, how can a robot find an object in a scene, among other queries. The objective of this work is to propose an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) architecture that performs the recognition of generic objects and object’s categories in a digital image database. With this implementation, it becomes possible to do image retrieval through the user´s scene description. To achieve our goal, we have used Computer Vision and Image Processing techniques in low level features extraction and Neural Networks (namely Kohonen’s Self-Organizing Maps) in the phase of object classes clustering. The main result of this work aims to be a seed for a more generic object recognition system, which can be extended to the automatic or semi-automatic index creation in huge image databases.

This work has aimed to implement an easy-to-use application which can be used to navigate through aerial imagery, assign sections of this image for different classes. Based on these category assignments the application can autonomously assign categories to so-far unknown fields, hence it helps the user in further classification. The output of the application is an index file, which can serve as underlying dataset for further analysis of a given area from geographic or economic point-of-view. To fulfil this task the program uses standard MPEG-7 descriptors to perform the feature extraction upon which the classification relies.

Este trabalho descreve um conjunto de técnicas para a recuperação de imagens baseada nos aspectos cromático e estrutural das mesmas. A abordagem aqui descrita utiliza mecanismos que permitem a preservação de informação espacial referente aos conteúdos extraídos da imagem de forma que a sua precisão possa ser ajustada de acordo com a necessidade da consulta. Um outro importante aspecto aqui considerado, é a possibilidade de se optar por um dos seguintes espaços de cores para a verificação de distâncias entre cores no momento da recuperação: RGB, L*u*v*, ou L*a*b*. Com estas diferentes possibilidades de espaços de cores, será verificada a influência que os mesmos podem provocar no processo de recuperação de imagens baseado em aspectos cromáticos. O conjunto de técnicas para a recuperação de imagens abordadas neste trabalho levou à construção do sistema RICE, um ambiente computacional através do qual pode-se realizar consultas a partir de um repositório de imagens. Para a verificação do desempenho dos diferentes parâmetros ajustáveis na recuperação de imagens aqui descrita e implementada no sistema RICE, foram utilizadas curvas de “Recall x Precision”. / This work describes a set of image retrieval techniques by color and shape similarity. The approach presented here allows to preserve spacial relantionships of the contents extracted from the image. And it can be adjusted accordingly to the query needs. Another important feature considered here, is the possibility of choosing between the RGB, L*u*v*, and L*a*b* color spaces to compute color distances during the image retrieval operation. With these three options of color spaces, the influence of each one in the image retrieval process based in chromatic contents will be verified. The set of techniques for image retrieval described here led to development of the RICE system, a computational environment for image retrieval by color and shape similarity. Furthermore, the recall x precision graph was applied in order to verify the performance of the RICE system in several configuration modes of image retrieval.

Este trabalho descreve um conjunto de técnicas para a recuperação de imagens baseada nos aspectos cromático e estrutural das mesmas. A abordagem aqui descrita utiliza mecanismos que permitem a preservação de informação espacial referente aos conteúdos extraídos da imagem de forma que a sua precisão possa ser ajustada de acordo com a necessidade da consulta. Um outro importante aspecto aqui considerado, é a possibilidade de se optar por um dos seguintes espaços de cores para a verificação de distâncias entre cores no momento da recuperação: RGB, L*u*v*, ou L*a*b*. Com estas diferentes possibilidades de espaços de cores, será verificada a influência que os mesmos podem provocar no processo de recuperação de imagens baseado em aspectos cromáticos. O conjunto de técnicas para a recuperação de imagens abordadas neste trabalho levou à construção do sistema RICE, um ambiente computacional através do qual pode-se realizar consultas a partir de um repositório de imagens. Para a verificação do desempenho dos diferentes parâmetros ajustáveis na recuperação de imagens aqui descrita e implementada no sistema RICE, foram utilizadas curvas de “Recall x Precision”. / This work describes a set of image retrieval techniques by color and shape similarity. The approach presented here allows to preserve spacial relantionships of the contents extracted from the image. And it can be adjusted accordingly to the query needs. Another important feature considered here, is the possibility of choosing between the RGB, L*u*v*, and L*a*b* color spaces to compute color distances during the image retrieval operation. With these three options of color spaces, the influence of each one in the image retrieval process based in chromatic contents will be verified. The set of techniques for image retrieval described here led to development of the RICE system, a computational environment for image retrieval by color and shape similarity. Furthermore, the recall x precision graph was applied in order to verify the performance of the RICE system in several configuration modes of image retrieval.

Thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Technology: Electrical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology / Small satellites, such as CubeSats are mainly utilized for space and earth imaging missions. Imaging CubeSats are equipped with high resolution cameras for the capturing of digital images, as well as mass storage devices for storing the images. The captured images are transmitted to the ground station and subsequently stored in a database. The main problem with stored images in a large image database, identified by researchers and developers within the last number of years, is the retrieval of precise, clear images and overcoming the semantic gap. The semantic gap relates to the lack of correlation between the semantic categories the user requires and the low level features that a content-based image retrieval system offers. Clear images are needed to be usable for applications such as mapping, disaster monitoring and town planning. The main objective of this thesis is the design and development of an image classification, storage and retrieval system for a CubeSat. This system enables efficient classification, storing and retrieval of images that are received on a daily basis from an in-orbit CubeSat. In order to propose such a system, a specific research methodology was chosen and adopted. This entails extensive literature reviews on image classification techniques and image feature extraction techniques, to extract content embedded within an image, and include studies on image database systems, data mining techniques and image retrieval techniques. The literature study led to a requirement analysis followed by the analyses of software development models in order to design the system. The proposed design entails classifying images using content embedded in the image and also extracting image metadata such as date and time. Specific features extraction techniques are needed to extract required content and metadata. In order to achieve extraction of information embedded in the image, colour feature (colour histogram), shape feature (Mathematical Morphology) and texture feature (GLCM) techniques were used. Other major contributions of this project include a graphical user interface which enables users to search for similar images against those stored in the database. An automatic image extractor algorithm was also designed to classify images according to date and time, and colour, texture and shape features extractor techniques were proposed. These ensured that when a user wishes to query the database, the shape objects, colour quantities and contrast contained in an image are extracted and compared to those stored in the database. Implementation and test results concluded that the designed system is able to categorize images automatically and at the same time provide efficient and accurate results. The features extracted for each image depend on colour, shape and texture methods. Optimal values were also incorporated in order to reduce retrieval times. The mathematical morphological technique was used to compute shape objects using erosion and dilation operators, and the co-occurrence matrix was used to compute the texture feature of the image.