Combined retrieval strategies for images with and without distinct objects

This paper presents the design of an all-season image retrieval system. The system handles the images with and without distinct object(s) using different retrieval strategies. Firstly, based on the visual contrasts and spatial information of an image, a neural network is trained to pre-classify an image as distinct-object or no-distinct-object category by using the Back Propagation Through Structure (BPTS) algorithm. In the second step, an image with distinct object(s) is processed by an attention-driven retrieval strategy emphasizing distinct objects. On the other hand, an image without distinct object(s) (e.g., a scenery images) is processed by a fusing-all retrieval strategy. An improved performance can be obtained by using this combined approach. Copyright © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.