Feature statistical retrieval applied to content based copy identification

In many image or video retrieval systems, the search for similar objects in the database includes a spatial access method to a multidimensional feature space. This step is generally considered as a problem independent of the features and the similarity type. The well known multidimensional nearest neighbor search has also been widely studied by the database community as a generic method. We propose a novel strategy dedicated to pseudo-invariant features retrieval and more specifically applied to content based copy identification. The range of a query is computed during the search according to deviation statistics between original and observed features. Furthermore, this approximate search range is directly mapped onto a Hilbert space-filling curve, allowing an efficient access to the database. Experimental results give excellent response times for very large databases both on synthetic and real data. This work is used in a TV monitoring system including more than 13000 hours of video in the reference database.