Kernel-Based Supervised Discrete Hashing for Image Retrieval

Recently hashing has become an important tool to tackle the problem of large-scale nearest neighbor searching in computer vision. However, learning discrete hashing codes is a very challenging task due to the NP hard optimization problem. In this paper, we propose a novel yet simple kernel-based supervised discrete hashing method via an asymmetric relaxation strategy. Specifically, we present an optimization model with preserving the hashing function and the relaxed linear function simultaneously to reduce the accumulated quantization error between hashing and linear functions. Furthermore, we improve the hashing model by relaxing the hashing function into a general binary code matrix and introducing an additional regularization term. Then we solve these two optimization models via an alternative strategy, which can effectively and stably preserve the similarity of neighbors in a low-dimensional Hamming space. The proposed hashing method can produce informative short binary codes that require less storage volume and lower optimization time cost. Extensive experiments on multiple benchmark databases demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed hashing method with short binary codes and its superior performance over the state of the arts.