A penalty function semi-continuous thresholding methods for constraints of hashing problems

Abstract

The Hashing process is an effective tool for handling large-scale data (for example, images, videos, or multi-model data) retrieval problems. To get better retrieval accuracy, hashing models usually are imposed with three rigorous constraints, i.e., discrete binary constraint, uncorrelated condition, and the balanced constraint, which will lead to being ‘NP-hard’. In this study, we divide the whole constraints set into the uncorrelated (orthogonality) constraint and the binary discrete balance constraint and propose a fast and accurate penalty function semi-continuous thresholding (PFSCT) hash coding algorithm based on forward–backward algorithms. In addition, we theoretically analyze the equivalence between the relaxed model and the original problems. Extensive numerical experiments on diverse large-scale benchmark datasets demonstrate comparable performance and effectiveness of the proposed method.