Support vector machines (SVMs) have been widely used in multimedia retrieval to learn a concept in order to find the best matches. In such a SVM active learning environment, the system first processes k sampling queries and top-k uncertain queries to select the candidate data items for training. The user's top-k relevant queries are then evaluated to compute the answer. This approach has shown to be effective. However, it suffers from the scalability problem associated with larger database sizes. To address this limitation, we propose an incremental query evaluation technique for these three types of queries. Based on the observation that most queries are not revised dramatically during the iterative evaluation, the proposed technique reuses the results of previous queries to reduce the computation cost. Furthermore, this technique takes advantage of a tuned index structure to efficiently prune irrelevant data. As a result, only a small portion of the data set needs to be accessed for query processing. This index structure also provides an inexpensive means to process the set of candidates to evaluate the final query result. This technique can work with different kernel functions and kernel parameters. Our experimental results indicate that the proposed technique significantly reduces the overall computation cost, and offers a promising solution to the scalability issue.

Similarity search is widely used in multimedia retrieval systems to find the most similar ones for a given object. Some similarity measures, however, are not metric, leading to existing metric index structures cannot be directly used. To address this issue, we propose a simulated-annealing-based technique to derive optimized mapping functions that transfer non-metric measures into metric, and still preserve the original similarity orderings. Then existing metric index structures can be used to speed up similarity search by exploiting the triangular inequality property. The experimental study confirms the efficacy of our approach.

Target search in content-based image retrieval (CBIR) systems refers to finding a specific (target) image such as a particular registered logo or a specific historical photograph. Existing techniques, designed around query refinement based on relevance feedback, suffer from slow convergence, and do not guarantee to find intended targets. To address these limitations, we propose several efficient query point movement methods. We prove that our approach is able to reach any given target image with fewer iterations in the worst and average cases. We propose a new index structure and query processing technique to improve retrieval effectiveness and efficiency. We also consider strategies to minimize the effects of users' inaccurate relevance feedback. Extensive experiments in simulated and realistic environments show that our approach significantly reduces the number of required iterations and improves overall retrieval performance. The experimental results also confirm that our approach can always retrieve intended targets even with poor selection of initial query points.

With the advances in medical imaging devices, large volumes of high-resolution 3-D medical image data have been produced. These high-resolution 3-D data are very large in size, and severely stress storage systems and networks. Most existing Internet-based 3-D medical image interactive applications therefore deal with only low- or medium-resolution image data. While it is possible to download the whole 3-D high-resolution image data from the server and perform the image visualization and analysis at the client site, such an alternative is infeasible when the high-resolution data are very large, and many users concurrently access the server. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for Internet-based interactive applications of high-resolution 3-D medical image data. Specifically, we first partition the whole 3-D data into buckets, remove the duplicate buckets, and then, compress each bucket separately. We also propose an index structure for these buckets to efficiently support typical queries such as 3-D slicer and region of interest, and only the relevant buckets are transmitted instead of the whole high-resolution 3-D medical image data. Furthermore, in order to better support concurrent accesses and to improve the average response time, we also propose techniques for efficient query processing, incremental transmission, and client sharing. Our experimental study in simulated and realistic environments indicates that the proposed framework can significantly reduce storage and communication requirements, and can enable real-time interaction with remote high-resolution 3-D medical image data for many concurrent users.

Various techniques have been developed for different query types in content-based image retrieval (CBIR) systems such as sampling queries, constrained sampling queries, multiple constrained sampling queries, k-NN queries, constrained k-NN queries, and multiple localized k-NN queries. In this paper, we propose a generalized query model suitable for expressing queries of different types, and investigate efficient processing techniques for this new framework. We develop new storage and query processing techniques to exploit sequential access and leverage inter-query concurrency to share computation. Our experimental results, based on the Corel dataset, indicates that the proposed optimization can significantly reduce average response time in a multiuser environment.

High-resolution 3D medical image data are typically huge in volume, varying from several hundred megabytes to several dozen gigabytes. Since such large-size data sets severely stress storage systems and networks, most existing Web-based interactive 3D medical imaging applications, such as 3D slicer and region-of-interest viewing, deal with only low-or medium-resolution images. In this paper, we introduce a single instance storage design, a client sharing technique, and a corresponding query processing method to enhance our existing remote medical image viewing system. We give performance results to show that the new design can significantly reduce storage and communication bandwidth requirements. Furthermore, it is more scalable to support a larger number of concurrent users.

With the proliferation of handheld devices, the demand of multimedia information retrieval on mobile devices has attracted more attention. A relevance feedback information retrieval process usually includes several rounds of query refinement. Each round incurs exchange of tens of images between the mobile device and the server. With limited wireless bandwidth, this process can incur substantial delay making the system unfriendly to use. We address this issue by considering a client-side relevance feedback (CRF) technique. Since relevance feedback is done on client side, system response is instantaneous significantly enhancing system usability. Furthermore, since the server is not involved in relevance feedback processing, it is able to support thousands more users simultaneously. Our experimental results indicate that this scheme also effectively address the semantic gap in content-based image retrieval.

With the advances in medical imaging devices, large volumes of high-resolution 3D medical image data have been produced. These high-resolution 3D data are very large in size, and severely stress storage systems and networks. Most existing Web-based 3D medical image interactive applications therefore deal with only low- or medium-resolution image data. While it is possible to download the whole 3D highresolution image data from the server and perform the image visualization and analysis at the client site, such an alternative is infeasible when the high-resolution data are very huge, and many users concurrently access the server. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for Web-based interactive applications of high-resolution 3D medical image data. Specifically, we first partition the whole 3D data into buckets, and then compress each bucket separately. We also propose an indexing structure for these buckets to efficiently support typical queries such as 3D slicer and region of interest (ROI), and only the relevant buckets are transmitted instead of the whole highresolution 3D medical image data. Furthermore, in order to better support concurrent accesses and to improve the average response time, we also propose some techniques for bucket group access on the server side and incremental transmission. Our experimental study based on a human brain MRI data set indicates that the proposed framework can significantly reduce storage and communication requirements, and can enable real-time interaction with remote highresolution 3D medical image data for many concurrent users.

Today’s Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) techniques are based on the "k-nearest neighbors" (k- NN) model. They retrieve images from a single neighborhood using low-level visual features. In this model, semantically similar images are assumed to be clustered in the high-dimensional feature space. Unfortunately, no visual-based feature vector is sufficient to facilitate perfect semantic clustering; and semantically similar images with different appearances are always clustered into distinct neighborhoods in the feature space. Confinement of the search results to a single neighborhood is an inherent limitation of the k-NN techniques. In this paper we consider a new image retrieval paradigm — the Query Decomposition model - that facilitates retrieval of semantically similar images from multiple neighborhoods in the feature space. The retrieval results are the k most similar images from different relevant clusters. We introduce a prototype, and present experimental results to illustrate the effectiveness and efficiency of this new approach to content-based image retrieval.

We propose a k-NN query processing algorithm that uses one or more window queries to retrieve the nearest neighbors of a given query point. We also propose two different methods to estimate the ranges to be used by the window queries. Each range estimation method requires different statistical knowledge about the spatial databases. Our experiments on the TIGER data allow us to study the behavior of the proposed algorithm using different range estimation methods. Apart from not requiring direct access to the spatial indices, the window queries used in the proposed algorithm can be easily supported by non-spatial database systems containing spatial objects.