<title>Content-based image retrieval using a mobile device as a novel interface</title>

Abstract

Given the large amount of research into content-based image retrieval currently taking place, new interfaces to systems that perform queries based on image content need to be considered. A new paradigm for content-based image retrieval is introduced, in which a mobile device is used to capture the query image and display the results. The system consists of a client-server architecture in which query images are captured on a mobile device and then transferred to a server for further processing. The server then returns the results of the query to the mobile device. The use of a mobile device as an interface to a content-based image retrieval or object recognition system presents a number of challenges because the query image from the device will have been degraded by noise and subjected to transformations through the imaging system. A methodology is presented that uses techniques inspired from the information retrieval community in order to aid efficient indexing and retrieval. In particular, a vector-space model is used in the efficient indexing of each image, and a two-stage pruning/ranking procedure is used to determine the correct matching image. The retrieval algorithm is shown to outperform existing algorithms when used with query images from the device.