Efficient image retrieval using MPEG-7 descriptors

In this paper, a new method to calculate the similarity among images using dominant color descriptor is discussed. Using earth mover's distance (EMD), better retrieval results can be obtained compared with those obtained from the original MPEG-7 reference software (XM) [Text of ISO/IEC 15938-6/FDIS Information Technology-Multimedia content description interface-Part 6: Reference Software]. To further improve the retrieval accuracy, texture information from edge histogram descriptor is added. In order to reduce the retrieval time, two different methods which can prune the images far from the query image are discussed. One is the lower bound of EMD, while the other is the M-tree index based on EMD distance. Experiments show that the lower bound is easier to implement and more efficient than the M-tree.