Multiresolution subimage similarity matching for large image databases
Carson Kai-Sang Leung, Raymond T. Ng · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1997
Many database management systems support whole-image matching. However, users may only remember certain subregions of the images. In this paper, we develop Padding and Reduction Algorithms to support subimage queries of arbitrary size based on local color information. The idea is to estimate the best- case lower bound to the dissimilarity measure between the query and the image. By making use of multiresolution representation, this lower bound becomes tighter as the scale becomes finer. Because image contents are usually pre- extracted and stored, a key issue is how to determine the number of levels used in the representation. We address this issue analytically by estimating the CPU and I/O costs, and experimentally by comparing the performance and accuracy of the outcomes of various filtering schemes. Our findings suggest that a 3-level hierarchy is preferred. We also study three strategies for searching multiple resolutions. Our studies indicate that the hybrid strategy with horizontal filtering on the coarse level and vertical filtering on remaining levels is the best choice when using Padding and Reduction Algorithms in the preferred 3-level multiresolution representation. The best 10 desired images can be retrieved efficiently and effectively from a collection of a thousand images in about 3.5 seconds.