Remote Sensing Image Retrieval by Scene Semantic Matching

This paper proposes a remote sensing (RS) image retrieval scheme by using image scene semantic (SS) matching. The low-level image visual features (VFs) are first mapped into multilevel spatial semantics via VF extraction, object-based classification of support vector machines, spatial relationship inference, and SS modeling. Furthermore, a spatial SS matching model that involves the object area, attribution, topology, and orientation features is proposed for the implementation of the sample-scene-based image retrieval. Moreover, a prototype system that uses a coarse-to-fine retrieval scheme is implemented with high retrieval accuracy. Experimental results show that the proposed method is suitable for spatial SS modeling, particularly geographic SS modeling, and performs well in spatial scene similarity matching.