Using Colour for Image Indexing

Abstract

Image colour is often thought to be an intrinsic correlate of surface reflectance and so is a common feature for image indexing. In this paper we point out that image colour is actually a function of surface reflectance and imaging geometry and the colour of the viewing illuminant. Fortunately methods exist for normalizing away these dependencies. Pixel based and colour channel-based normalizations remove dependency on geometry and light colour respectively. Unfortunately, neither method removes both dependencies simultaneously and so a single normalization must be chosen. Common practice dictates that pixel-based normalization is the most useful.

In this paper we set out to evaluate the merits or demerits of this common practice. In particular, we asked ‘which works better, pixel based or channel based normalizations?’. To answer this question we carried our many image indexing experiments on a variety of image databases. In all cases, and contrary to common practice, our results indicate that channel normalization facilitates the best indexing performance. We predict that channel based normalization may improve indexing performance for many image indexing applications.

Conference

Publication date: February 1998

Publication date (Print): February 1998

Pages: 1-7

Affiliations

The Colour & Imaging Institute, The University of Derby

Derby, United kingdom

The Media Lab, Massachussettes Institute of Technology

Cambridge, USA

INRIA Rhônes Alpes

Grenoble, France

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/CIR1998.5

Copyright statement: © Graham D. Finlayson et al. Published by BCS Learning and Development Ltd. Challenge of Image Retrieval, University of Northumbria at Newcastle, UK

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Challenge of Image Retrieval

Conference acronym: CIR

Conference number:

Conference location: University of Northumbria at Newcastle, UK

Conference date: 5 February 1998

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Image Retrieval

Product

Product Information: 1477-9358BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/CIR1998.5

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

Categories

Series title: Electronic Workshops in Computing