IRM: Integrated Region Matching for Image Retrieval

摘要

Content-based image retrieval using region segementation has been an active research area. We present IRM (Integrated Region Matching), a novel similarity measure for region-based image similarity comparison. The targeted image retrieval systems represent an image by a set of regions, roughly corresponding to objects, which are characterized by features reflecting color, texture, shape, and location properteis. The IRM measure for evaluating overall similarity between images incorporates propertiesl of all the regions in the images by a region-matching scheme. Compared with retrieval based on individual regons, the overall similarity approach reduces the influence of inaccurate segmentation, approach reduces the influence of inaccurate segmentation, helps to clarify the semantics of a particular region, and enables a simple querying interface for region-based mage retrieval systems. The IRM has been implemented as a part of our experimental SIMPLIcity image retrieval system. The application to a database of about 200,000 general-purpose images shows excpetional robustness to image alterations such as intensity variation, sharpness variation, color distortions, shape distortions, cropping, shifting, and rotation. Compared with several existing systems, our system in general achieves more accurate retrieval at higher speed.