Salient region extraction based on intensity mapping for image retrieval

Salient region extraction provides an alternative methodology to image description in many applications such as adaptive content delivery and image retrieval. In this paper, we propose a robust approach to extracting the salient region based on bottom-up visual attention. The main contributions are twofold: 1) Instead of the feature parallel integration, the proposed saliencies are derived by serial processing between texture and color feature. 2) A constructive approach is proposed for rendering an image by a non-linear intensity mapping, which can efficiently eliminate high contrast noise regions in the image. And then the salient map can be robustly generated for a variety of nature images. Finally, the salient region extracted by our algorithm is used for image semantic retrieval. Experiments show that the proposed algorithm can characterize the human perception well and achieve satisfied retrieval performance.