Scene structural matrix for image indexing and retrieval

We present a new image indexing and retrieval method for image database applications. We introduce a novel image content description feature termed scene structural matrix (SSM). The SSM captures the overall structural information of the scene by indexing the geometric features of the image. We also introduce a constraint adaptive image segmentation method termed middle cut (MC) to partition the image and derive the multi-scale geometric structures of the image. Experimental results show that SSM is particularly effective in retrieving images with strong structural features, such as landscape photographs. It is also shown that SSM is robust against spatial and spectral distortions thus making it superior to the traditional colour histogram, colour correlogram and MPEG7-color structure histogram in certain applications