Image retrieval with sketches
and compositions
Kumar
Rajendran, R.
Shih-Fu Chang
Dept. of Electr. Eng., Columbia
Univ., New York, NY;
This paper appears in:
Multimedia and Expo, 2000. ICME 2000. 2000 IEEE International
Conference on Multimedia
Abstract:
We present an image search technique that is based on
characterizing the strongest edges of an image. It allows queries in the
form of rough line-sketches that outline the basic form and composition
of an image. This permits the user to quickly and easily transform a
mental picture of an image into a query. Characterizing images with
signatures that represents their strongest edges, and comparing these to
a dynamically generated signature of the user's sketch achieves this
search. The edge signature is generated over multiple scales to account
for the variation in detail of the user's line-sketch. Edge-coherence, a
measure of the perceptual strength of an edge, based on its continuity,
is used in generating the signature. Our search technique is fast enough
to allow the system to respond with results at the completion of each
stroke of a query sketch. The algorithm is robust and invariant to
scale, rotation and translation. We also show how this edge-based search
can be merged seamlessly with the more traditional color-region and
shape-based searches to produce a search interface that is expressive,
intuitive, simple, and works in the absence of sample images
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