Automatic image annotation using feature selection based on improving quantum particle swarm optimization

Automatic image annotation (AIA) is a task of assigning one or more semantic concepts to a given image and a promising way to achieve more effective image retrieval and analysis. It is a typical classification problem. Due to the semantic gap between low-level visual features and high-level image semantic, the performances of many existing image annotation algorithms are not satisfactory. This paper presents a novel AIA scheme based on improved quantum particle swarm optimization (IQPSO) algorithm for visual features selection (VFS) and an ensemble stratagem based on boosting technique to improve performance of image annotation approach. To maintain the population diversity, the measure method of population diversity and improvement operation are proposed. To achieve better performance of ALA scheme, the measure of population diversity is as a control condition of VFS process. The classification result of an ensemble classifier is as the final annotation result rather than individual classifier. The experimental results confirm that the proposed AIA scheme is very effectiveness. When using proposed AIA scheme over three image datasets respectively, the annotation results are satisfactory. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.