Improving image retrieval effectiveness via multiple queries

Author(s):  
Xiangyu Jin ◽  
James C. French
2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aabid Hussain ◽  
Sumeer Gul ◽  
Tariq Ahmad Shah ◽  
Sheikh Shueb

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore the retrieval effectiveness of three image search engines (ISE) – Google Images, Yahoo Image Search and Picsearch in terms of their image retrieval capability. It is an effort to carry out a Cranfield experiment to know how efficient the commercial giants in the image search are and how efficient an image specific search engine is. Design/methodology/approach The keyword search feature of three ISEs – Google images, Yahoo Image Search and Picsearch – was exploited to make search with keyword captions of photos as query terms. Selected top ten images were used to act as a testbed for the study, as images were searched in accordance with features of the test bed. Features to be looked for included size (1200 × 800), format of images (JPEG/JPG) and the rank of the original image retrieved by ISEs under study. To gauge the overall retrieval effectiveness in terms of set standards, only first 50 result hits were checked. Retrieval efficiency of select ISEs were examined with respect to their precision and relative recall. Findings Yahoo Image Search outscores Google Images and Picsearch both in terms of precision and relative recall. Regarding other criteria – image size, image format and image rank in search results, Google Images is ahead of others. Research limitations/implications The study only takes into consideration basic image search feature, i.e. text-based search. Practical implications The study implies that image search engines should focus on relevant descriptions. The study evaluated text-based image retrieval facilities and thereby offers a choice to users to select best among the available ISEs for their use. Originality/value The study provides an insight into the effectiveness of the three ISEs. The study is one of the few studies to gauge retrieval effectiveness of ISEs. Study also produced key findings that are important for all ISE users and researchers and the Web image search industry. Findings of the study will also prove useful for search engine companies to improve their services.


2012 ◽  
Vol 6-7 ◽  
pp. 1150-1155
Author(s):  
Gui Zhi Li ◽  
Chang Sheng Zhou ◽  
Wei Wang ◽  
Ya Hui Liu

Conventional approaches to image retrieval are based on the assumption that relevant images are physically near the query image in some feature space. However, semantically related images are often scattered across several visual clusters. This leads to adapting multiple queries to represent a query in the feature space. Therefore, it is necessary to handle disjunctive queries in the feature space. In this paper, a new content-based image retrieval method with relevance feedback technique using RBF neural network learning is proposed. The method transfers the process of relevance feedback into a learning problem of RBF neural network. RBFNN can describe the distribution of positive feedback sample images in feature space with a set of neighboring clusters produced through constructing neural network, for accurately reflecting their semantic relevance. The performance of the method using RBFNN is evaluated on a database of 10,000 images. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.


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