Texture image retrieval using contourlet transform

Content based image retrieval is a challenging issue in management of existing large digital image libraries and databases. The accuracy of image retrieval methods is subject to effective extraction of image features such as color, texture, and shape. In this paper we propose a new image retrieval method using contourlet transform coefficients. We use the properties of contourlet coefficients to assign the normal distribution function to the distribution of coefficients in each sub-band. The assigned normal distribution functions are used to extract the texture feature vector at the next stage. Simulation results indicate that the proposed method outperforms other conventional texture image retrieval methods such as, Gabor filter and wavelet transform. Moreover, this method shows a noticeable higher performance compared to another contourlet based method.