Color image coding, indexing and retrieval using binary space partitioning tree

This paper presents a unified approach to colour image coding, content-based indexing, and retrieval for database applications. The binary space partitioning (BSP) tree, traditionally used in gray scale image coding (Wu 1992, Radha et al. 1996) is extended to represent colour images. The BSP tree, hence the structure, of the image is explicitly coded. A method is developed to compute the similarities of images based on their BSP tree representations. In image database applications, the images in the database are coded by BSP tree to achieve a good balance between storage efficiency and easy manipulation of image data. Content-based image querying is performed in the compressed bit streams by comparing the BSP tree of the query image with those of the images in the database.