With the increasing number of images available electronically,  automatic retrieval systems are becoming essential. This book  introduces an absolute prerequisite for any such system: a metric,  called the Earth Mover's Distance (EMD), for comparing images in terms  of their appearance. This metric describes the amount of work that is  necessary to transform one image into another, in a precisely defined  mathematical sense, and in a flexible and perceptually meaningful  manner. An efficient linear programming algorithm enables the  computation of this metric fast enough to be used for the interactive  retrieval of images from large repositories. The perceptual properties  of the EMD, and the speed of its computation, lead to database  navigation, a new paradigm for interacting with a repository of  images. When navigating, the user is shown a very large number of  images in response to a query. The EMD between pairs of images,  together with a multidimensional scaling method, allows these images  to be displayed so that similar images appear near to each other on  the computer screen. In this way, the user can grasp at a glance what  is returned, and can reach the images of interest with a small number  of mouse clicks. A CD-ROM with full color images is included.     Extensive benchmark evaluations and example retrieval systems show the  usefulness of the EMD and the advantages of image database navigation.    This book will be of interest to researchers, industrial  professionals, and graduate and post-graduate students in the fields  of Computer Vision; Image Processing; Data Mining; Digital Libraries;  Psychophysics; Computer Science; Electrical Engineering.

Perceptual metrics for image database navigation PDF

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