Image retrieval system
US6163622A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Dec 18, 1997 |
| Grant date | Dec 19, 2000 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Dec 18, 2017 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC Y)Emerging Cross-Sectional Technologies
- CPC primaryY10S707/99936
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
In an image retrieval system, a database with a large number of images is searched to find one or more images meeting the specification of a user. This specification is given in the form of a query image. The system determines the similarity between the query image and a particular image from the database by comparing the color histograms of the two images. The histograms are treated as statistical distributions and the similarity is determined on the basis of an information theoretic measure of the distributions. In a first embodiment, the similarity is determined using the Kullback informational divergence of the two histograms. In a second embodiment, the similarity is based on the entropy of the distribution of similarity coefficients of the two histograms is used.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.