Content Based Image Retrieval using enhanced SURF

Image retrieval techniques finds very useful in content management systems. Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) methods incorporates specific image features such as colors, textures, keypoints etc., for retrieving similar images from databases. Most of the keypoint detectors and keypoint descriptors uses only grayscale information. The retrieval accuracy of these methods can be improved by adding additional color information to the keypoint descriptors. In this paper, an enhanced SURF descriptor is proposed for CBIR applications, which extracts the image features by computing the Hu moments along with eigen values in the immediate neighbourhood of the detected keypoints. Experimental results shows better image retrieval accuracy by using enhanced SURF descriptor. Also, the enhanced SURF descriptor is able to differentiate between images of same object having similar grayscale properties but having different colors.