Image retrieval based on fuzzy color histogram processing

Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) is a collection of techniques for retrieving images on the basis of features, such as color, texture and shape. An efficient tool, which is widely used in CBIR, is that of color image histograms. The classic method of color histogram creation results in very large histograms with large variations between neighboring bins. Thus, small changes in the image might result in great changes in the histogram. Moreover, the fact that each color space consists of three components leads to 3-dimensional histograms. Manipulating and comparing 3D histograms is a complicated and computationally expensive procedure. The need, therefore, for reduction of the three dimensions to one could lead to efficient approaches. This procedure of projecting the 3D histogram onto one single-dimension histogram is called histogram linking. In this paper, a new fuzzy linking method of color histogram creation is proposed based on the L*a*b* color space and provides a histogram which contains only 10 bins. The histogram creation method in hand was assessed based on the performances achieved in retrieving similar images from a widely diverse image collection. The experimental results prove that the proposed method is less sensitive to various changes in the images (such as lighting variations, occlusions and noise) than other methods of histogram creation. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.