Learning Noise-Assisted Robust Image Features for Fine-Grained Image Retrieval

Fine-grained image search is one of the most challenging tasks in computer vision that aims to retrieve similar images at the fine-grained level for a given query image.The key objective is to learn discriminative fine-grained features by training deep models such that similar images are clustered,and dissimilar images are separated in the low embedding space.Previous works primarily focused on defining local structure loss functions like triplet loss,pairwise loss,etc.However,training via these approaches takes a long training time,and they have poor accuracy.Additionally,representations learned through it tend to tighten up in the embedded space and lose generalizability to unseen classes.This paper proposes a noise-assisted representation learning method for fine-grained image retrieval to mitigate these issues.In the proposed work,class manifold learning is performed in which positive pairs are created with noise insertion operation instead of tightening class clusters.And other instances are treated as negatives within the same cluster.Then a loss function is defined to penalize when the distance between instances of the same class becomes too small relative to the noise pair in that class in embedded space.The proposed approach is validated on CARS-196 and CUB-200 datasets and achieved better retrieval results(85.38%recall@1 for CARS-196%and 70.13%recall@1 for CUB-200)compared to other existing methods.

Content-Based Lace Image Retrieval System Using a Hierarchical Multifeature Scheme

An android-based lace image retrieval system based on content-based image retrieval (CBIR) technique is presented. This paper applies shape and texture features of lace image in our system and proposes a hierarchical multifeature scheme to facilitate coarseto-fine matching for efficient lace image retrieval in a large database. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed system meet the requirements of realtime.

An Efficient Content-Based Image Retrieval System Using kNN and Fuzzy Mathematical Algorithm

The implementation of content-based image retrieval(CBIR)mainly depends on two key technologies:image feature extraction and image feature matching.In this paper,we extract the color features based on Global Color Histogram(GCH)and texture features based on Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix(GLCM).In order to obtain the effective and representative features of the image,we adopt the fuzzy mathematical algorithm in the process of color feature extraction and texture feature extraction respectively.And we combine the fuzzy color feature vector with the fuzzy texture feature vector to form the comprehensive fuzzy feature vector of the image according to a certain way.Image feature matching mainly depends on the similarity between two image feature vectors.In this paper,we propose a novel similarity measure method based on k-Nearest Neighbors(kNN)and fuzzy mathematical algorithm(SBkNNF).Finding out the k nearest neighborhood images of the query image from the image data set according to an appropriate similarity measure method.Using the k similarity values between the query image and its k neighborhood images to constitute the new k-dimensional fuzzy feature vector corresponding to the query image.And using the k similarity values between the retrieved image and the k neighborhood images of the query image to constitute the new k-dimensional fuzzy feature vector corresponding to the retrieved image.Calculating the similarity between the two kdimensional fuzzy feature vector according to a certain fuzzy similarity algorithm to measure the similarity between the query image and the retrieved image.Extensive experiments are carried out on three data sets:WANG data set,Corel-5k data set and Corel-10k data set.The experimental results show that the outperforming retrieval performance of our proposed CBIR system with the other CBIR systems.

A Content-Based Parallel Image Retrieval System on Cluster Architectures

We propose a content-based parallel image retrieval system to achieve high responding ability. Our system is developed on cluster architectures. It has several retrieval. servers to supply the service of content-based image retrieval. It adopts the Browser/Server (B/S) mode. The users could visit our system though web pages. It uses the symmetrical color-spatial features (SCSF) to represent the content of an image. The SCSF is effective and efficient for image matching because it is independent of image distortion such as rotation and flip as well as it increases the matching accuracy. The SCSF was organized by M-tree, which could speedup the searching procedure. Our experiments show that the image matching is quickly and efficiently with the use of SCSF. And with the support of several retrieval servers, the system could respond to many users at mean time. Key words content-based image retrieval - cluster architecture - color-spatial feature - B/S mode - task parallel - WWW - Internet CLC number TP391 Foundation item: Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (60173058)Biography: ZHOU Bing (1975-), male, Ph. D candidate, reseach direction: data mining, content-based image retrieval.

An image retrieval system based on fractal dimension

This paper presents a new kind of image retrieval system which obtains the feature vectors of images by estimating their fractal dimension; and at the same time establishes a tree structure image database. After preprocessing and feature extracting, a given image is matched with the standard images in the image database using a hierarchical method of image indexing.

Indexing of Content-Based Image Retrieval System with Image Understanding Approach

This paper presents a novel efficient semantic image classification algorithm for high-level feature indexing of high-dimension image database. Experiments show that the algorithm performs well. The size of the train set and the test set is 7 537 and 5 000 respectively. Based on this theory, another ground is built with 12,000 images, which are divided into three classes: city, landscape and person, the total result of the classifications is 88.92%, meanwhile, some preliminary results are presented for image understanding based on semantic image classification and low level features. The groundtruth for the experiments is built with the images from Corel database, photos and some famous face databases.

Efficient Cloud Image Retrieval System Using Weighted-Inverted Index and Database Filtering Algorithms

With the advance of multimedia technology and communications, images and videos become the major streaming information through the Internet. How to fast retrieve desired similar images precisely from the Internet scale image/video databases is the most important retrieval control target. In this paper, a cloud based content-based image retrieval （CBIR） scheme is presented. Database-categorizing based on weighted-inverted index （DCWII） and database f＇dtering algorithm （DFA） is used to speed up the features matching process. In the DCWII, the weights are assigned to discrete cosine transform （DCT） coefficients histograms and the database is categorized by weighted features. In addition, the DFA filters out the irrelevant image in the database to reduce unnecessary computation loading for features matching. Experiments show that the proposed CBIR scheme outperforms previous work in the precision-recall performance and maintains mean average precision （mAP） about 0.678 in the large-scale database comprising one million images. Our scheme also can reduce about 50% to 85% retrieval time by pre-filtering the database, which helps to improve the efficiency of retrieval systems.

Shift Invariance Level Comparison of Several Contourlet Transforms and Their Texture Image Retrieval Systems

In this paper, we proposed a metric to measure the shift invariance of the three different contourlet transforms. And then, using the same structure texture image retrieval system which use subband coefficients energy, standard deviation and kurtosis features with Canberra distance, we gave a comparison of their texture description abilities. Experimental results show that contourlet-2.3 texture image retrieval system has almost retrieval rates with non-sub sampled contourlet system;the two systems have better retrieval results than the original contourlet retrieval system. On the other hand, for the relatively lower redundancy, we recommend using contourlet- 2.3 as texture description transform.

Developing global image feature analysis models to predict cancer risk and prognosis

In order to develop precision or personalized medicine,identifying new quantitative imaging markers and building machine learning models to predict cancer risk and prognosis has been attracting broad research interest recently.Most of these research approaches use the similar concepts of the conventional computer-aided detection schemes of medical images,which include steps in detecting and segmenting suspicious regions or tumors,followed by training machine learning models based on the fusion of multiple image features computed from the segmented regions or tumors.However,due to the heterogeneity and boundary fuzziness of the suspicious regions or tumors,segmenting subtle regions is often difficult and unreliable.Additionally,ignoring global and/or background parenchymal tissue characteristics may also be a limitation of the conventional approaches.In our recent studies,we investigated the feasibility of developing new computer-aided schemes implemented with the machine learning models that are trained by global image features to predict cancer risk and prognosis.We trained and tested several models using images obtained from full-field digital mammography,magnetic resonance imaging,and computed tomography of breast,lung,and ovarian cancers.Study results showed that many of these new models yielded higher performance than other approaches used in current clinical practice.Furthermore,the computed global image features also contain complementary information from the features computed from the segmented regions or tumors in predicting cancer prognosis.Therefore,the global image features can be used alone to develop new case-based prediction models or can be added to current tumor-based models to increase their discriminatory power.

Two-Edge-Corner Image Features for Registration of Geospatial Images with Large View Variations

This paper presents a robust image feature that can be used to automatically establish match correspondences between aerial images of suburban areas with large view variations. Unlike most commonly used invariant image features, this feature is view variant. The geometrical structure of the feature allows predicting its visual appearance according to the observer’s view. This feature is named 2EC (2 Edges and a Corner) as it utilizes two line segments or edges and their intersection or corner. These lines are constrained to correspond to the boundaries of rooftops. The description of each feature includes the two edges’ length, their intersection, orientation, and the image patch surrounded by a parallelogram that is constructed with the two edges. Potential match candidates are obtained by comparing features, while accounting for the geometrical changes that are expected due to large view variation. Once the putative matches are obtained, the outliers are filtered out using a projective matrix optimization method. Based on the results of the optimization process, a second round of matching is conducted within a more confined search space that leads to a more accurate match establishment. We demonstrate how establishing match correspondences using these features lead to computing more accurate camera parameters and fundamental matrix and therefore more accurate image registration and 3D reconstruction.

Robustness Evaluation of Remote-Sensing Image Feature Detectors with TH Priori-Information Data Set

In this paper,we build a remote-sensing satellite imagery priori-information data set,and propose an approach to evaluate the robustness of remote-sensing image feature detectors.The building TH Priori-Information(TPI)data set with 2297 remote sensing images serves as a standardized high-resolution data set for studies related to remote-sensing image features.The TPI contains 1)raw and calibrated remote-sensing images with high spatial and temporal resolutions(up to 2 m and 7 days,respectively),and 2)a built-in 3-D target area model that supports view position,view angle,lighting,shadowing,and other transformations.Based on TPI,we further present a quantized approach,including the feature recurrence rate,the feature match score,and the weighted feature robustness score,to evaluate the robustness of remote-sensing image feature detectors.The quantized approach gives general and objective assessments of the robustness of feature detectors under complex remote-sensing circumstances.Three remote-sensing image feature detectors,including scale-invariant feature transform(SIFT),speeded up robust features(SURF),and priori information based robust features(PIRF),are evaluated using the proposed approach on the TPI data set.Experimental results show that the robustness of PIRF outperforms others by over 6.2%.

Advancements in Remote Sensing Image Dehazing: Introducing URA-Net with Multi-Scale Dense Feature Fusion Clusters and Gated Jump Connection

The degradation of optical remote sensing images due to atmospheric haze poses a significant obstacle,profoundly impeding their effective utilization across various domains.Dehazing methodologies have emerged as pivotal components of image preprocessing,fostering an improvement in the quality of remote sensing imagery.This enhancement renders remote sensing data more indispensable,thereby enhancing the accuracy of target iden-tification.Conventional defogging techniques based on simplistic atmospheric degradation models have proven inadequate for mitigating non-uniform haze within remotely sensed images.In response to this challenge,a novel UNet Residual Attention Network(URA-Net)is proposed.This paradigmatic approach materializes as an end-to-end convolutional neural network distinguished by its utilization of multi-scale dense feature fusion clusters and gated jump connections.The essence of our methodology lies in local feature fusion within dense residual clusters,enabling the extraction of pertinent features from both preceding and current local data,depending on contextual demands.The intelligently orchestrated gated structures facilitate the propagation of these features to the decoder,resulting in superior outcomes in haze removal.Empirical validation through a plethora of experiments substantiates the efficacy of URA-Net,demonstrating its superior performance compared to existing methods when applied to established datasets for remote sensing image defogging.On the RICE-1 dataset,URA-Net achieves a Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio(PSNR)of 29.07 dB,surpassing the Dark Channel Prior(DCP)by 11.17 dB,the All-in-One Network for Dehazing(AOD)by 7.82 dB,the Optimal Transmission Map and Adaptive Atmospheric Light For Dehazing(OTM-AAL)by 5.37 dB,the Unsupervised Single Image Dehazing(USID)by 8.0 dB,and the Superpixel-based Remote Sensing Image Dehazing(SRD)by 8.5 dB.Particularly noteworthy,on the SateHaze1k dataset,URA-Net attains preeminence in overall performance,yielding defogged images characterized by consistent visual quality.This underscores the contribution of the research to the advancement of remote sensing technology,providing a robust and efficient solution for alleviating the adverse effects of haze on image quality.

Triple-path feature transform network for ring-array photoacoustic tomography image reconstruction

Photoacoustic imaging(PAI)is a noninvasive emerging imaging method based on the photoacoustic effect,which provides necessary assistance for medical diagnosis.It has the characteristics of large imaging depth and high contrast.However,limited by the equipment cost and reconstruction time requirements,the existing PAI systems distributed with annular array transducers are difficult to take into account both the image quality and the imaging speed.In this paper,a triple-path feature transform network(TFT-Net)for ring-array photoacoustic tomography is proposed to enhance the imaging quality from limited-view and sparse measurement data.Specifically,the network combines the raw photoacoustic pressure signals and conventional linear reconstruction images as input data,and takes the photoacoustic physical model as a prior information to guide the reconstruction process.In addition,to enhance the ability of extracting signal features,the residual block and squeeze and excitation block are introduced into the TFT-Net.For further efficient reconstruction,the final output of photoacoustic signals uses‘filter-then-upsample’operation with a pixel-shuffle multiplexer and a max out module.Experiment results on simulated and in-vivo data demonstrate that the constructed TFT-Net can restore the target boundary clearly,reduce background noise,and realize fast and high-quality photoacoustic image reconstruction of limited view with sparse sampling.

A Concise and Varied Visual Features-Based Image Captioning Model with Visual Selection

Image captioning has gained increasing attention in recent years.Visual characteristics found in input images play a crucial role in generating high-quality captions.Prior studies have used visual attention mechanisms to dynamically focus on localized regions of the input image,improving the effectiveness of identifying relevant image regions at each step of caption generation.However,providing image captioning models with the capability of selecting the most relevant visual features from the input image and attending to them can significantly improve the utilization of these features.Consequently,this leads to enhanced captioning network performance.In light of this,we present an image captioning framework that efficiently exploits the extracted representations of the image.Our framework comprises three key components:the Visual Feature Detector module(VFD),the Visual Feature Visual Attention module(VFVA),and the language model.The VFD module is responsible for detecting a subset of the most pertinent features from the local visual features,creating an updated visual features matrix.Subsequently,the VFVA directs its attention to the visual features matrix generated by the VFD,resulting in an updated context vector employed by the language model to generate an informative description.Integrating the VFD and VFVA modules introduces an additional layer of processing for the visual features,thereby contributing to enhancing the image captioning model’s performance.Using the MS-COCO dataset,our experiments show that the proposed framework competes well with state-of-the-art methods,effectively leveraging visual representations to improve performance.The implementation code can be found here:https://github.com/althobhani/VFDICM(accessed on 30 July 2024).

CMMCAN:Lightweight Feature Extraction and Matching Network for Endoscopic Images Based on Adaptive Attention

In minimally invasive surgery,endoscopes or laparoscopes equipped with miniature cameras and tools are used to enter the human body for therapeutic purposes through small incisions or natural cavities.However,in clinical operating environments,endoscopic images often suffer from challenges such as low texture,uneven illumination,and non-rigid structures,which affect feature observation and extraction.This can severely impact surgical navigation or clinical diagnosis due to missing feature points in endoscopic images,leading to treatment and postoperative recovery issues for patients.To address these challenges,this paper introduces,for the first time,a Cross-Channel Multi-Modal Adaptive Spatial Feature Fusion(ASFF)module based on the lightweight architecture of EfficientViT.Additionally,a novel lightweight feature extraction and matching network based on attention mechanism is proposed.This network dynamically adjusts attention weights for cross-modal information from grayscale images and optical flow images through a dual-branch Siamese network.It extracts static and dynamic information features ranging from low-level to high-level,and from local to global,ensuring robust feature extraction across different widths,noise levels,and blur scenarios.Global and local matching are performed through a multi-level cascaded attention mechanism,with cross-channel attention introduced to simultaneously extract low-level and high-level features.Extensive ablation experiments and comparative studies are conducted on the HyperKvasir,EAD,M2caiSeg,CVC-ClinicDB,and UCL synthetic datasets.Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed network improves upon the baseline EfficientViT-B3 model by 75.4%in accuracy(Acc),while also enhancing runtime performance and storage efficiency.When compared with the complex DenseDescriptor feature extraction network,the difference in Acc is less than 7.22%,and IoU calculation results on specific datasets outperform complex dense models.Furthermore,this method increases the F1 score by 33.2%and accelerates runtime by 70.2%.It is noteworthy that the speed of CMMCAN surpasses that of comparative lightweight models,with feature extraction and matching performance comparable to existing complex models but with faster speed and higher cost-effectiveness.

Research on Multi-Scale Feature Fusion Network Algorithm Based on Brain Tumor Medical Image Classification

Gliomas have the highest mortality rate of all brain tumors.Correctly classifying the glioma risk period can help doctors make reasonable treatment plans and improve patients’survival rates.This paper proposes a hierarchical multi-scale attention feature fusion medical image classification network(HMAC-Net),which effectively combines global features and local features.The network framework consists of three parallel layers:The global feature extraction layer,the local feature extraction layer,and the multi-scale feature fusion layer.A linear sparse attention mechanism is designed in the global feature extraction layer to reduce information redundancy.In the local feature extraction layer,a bilateral local attention mechanism is introduced to improve the extraction of relevant information between adjacent slices.In the multi-scale feature fusion layer,a channel fusion block combining convolutional attention mechanism and residual inverse multi-layer perceptron is proposed to prevent gradient disappearance and network degradation and improve feature representation capability.The double-branch iterative multi-scale classification block is used to improve the classification performance.On the brain glioma risk grading dataset,the results of the ablation experiment and comparison experiment show that the proposed HMAC-Net has the best performance in both qualitative analysis of heat maps and quantitative analysis of evaluation indicators.On the dataset of skin cancer classification,the generalization experiment results show that the proposed HMAC-Net has a good generalization effect.

A Survey of Crime Scene Investigation Image Retrieval Using Deep Learning

Crime scene investigation(CSI)image is key evidence carrier during criminal investiga-tion,in which CSI image retrieval can assist the public police to obtain criminal clues.Moreover,with the rapid development of deep learning,data-driven paradigm has become the mainstreammethod of CSI image feature extraction and representation,and in this process,datasets provideeffective support for CSI retrieval performance.However,there is a lack of systematic research onCSI image retrieval methods and datasets.Therefore,we present an overview of the existing worksabout one-class and multi-class CSI image retrieval based on deep learning.According to theresearch,based on their technical functionalities and implementation methods,CSI image retrievalis roughly classified into five categories:feature representation,metric learning,generative adversar-ial networks,autoencoder networks and attention networks.Furthermore,We analyzed the remain-ing challenges and discussed future work directions in this field.

Importance-aware 3D volume visualization for medical content-based image retrieval-a preliminary study

Background A medical content-based image retrieval(CBIR)system is designed to retrieve images from large imaging repositories that are visually similar to a user′s query image.CBIR is widely used in evidence-based diagnosis,teaching,and research.Although the retrieval accuracy has largely improved,there has been limited development toward visualizing important image features that indicate the similarity of retrieved images.Despite the prevalence of 3D volumetric data in medical imaging such as computed tomography(CT),current CBIR systems still rely on 2D cross-sectional views for the visualization of retrieved images.Such 2D visualization requires users to browse through the image stacks to confirm the similarity of the retrieved images and often involves mental reconstruction of 3D information,including the size,shape,and spatial relations of multiple structures.This process is time-consuming and reliant on users'experience.Methods In this study,we proposed an importance-aware 3D volume visualization method.The rendering parameters were automatically optimized to maximize the visibility of important structures that were detected and prioritized in the retrieval process.We then integrated the proposed visualization into a CBIR system,thereby complementing the 2D cross-sectional views for relevance feedback and further analyses.Results Our preliminary results demonstrate that 3D visualization can provide additional information using multimodal positron emission tomography and computed tomography(PETCT)images of a non-small cell lung cancer dataset.

Unsupervised multi-modal image translation based on the squeeze-and-excitation mechanism and feature attention module

The unsupervised multi-modal image translation is an emerging domain of computer vision whose goal is to transform an image from the source domain into many diverse styles in the target domain.However,the multi-generator mechanism is employed among the advanced approaches available to model different domain mappings,which results in inefficient training of neural networks and pattern collapse,leading to inefficient generation of image diversity.To address this issue,this paper introduces a multi-modal unsupervised image translation framework that uses a generator to perform multi-modal image translation.Specifically,firstly,the domain code is introduced in this paper to explicitly control the different generation tasks.Secondly,this paper brings in the squeeze-and-excitation(SE)mechanism and feature attention(FA)module.Finally,the model integrates multiple optimization objectives to ensure efficient multi-modal translation.This paper performs qualitative and quantitative experiments on multiple non-paired benchmark image translation datasets while demonstrating the benefits of the proposed method over existing technologies.Overall,experimental results have shown that the proposed method is versatile and scalable.