MLMQ-IR: Multi-label multi-query image retrieval based on the variance of Hamming distance

Abstract

Image retrieval (IR) methods extract the most relevant images to the query images from an image database. The existing IR methods, which retrieve images with a low degree of similarity, use computationally expensive approaches. In this study, a novel Multi-Label Multi-Query IR (MLMQ-IR) method based on the variance of Hamming distance is presented for the query of multiple images having multiple labels. The MLMQ-IR uses deep learning-based hashing code generation with ResNet50 structure. The variance evaluates the minimum variation of the distances between the query and database images, providing the trade-off images according to the center of Pareto space. Moreover, the MLMQ-IR exploits a new Triple Loss Multi-Label Hashing (TLMH) depending on binary cross-entropy loss and bit-balance loss functions. The MLMQ-IR is compared with recent multi-label and multi-query methods through MIRFLICKR-25 K, MS-COCO and NUS-WIDE datasets in terms of three well-known metrics, and the methods are ranked with succussed sorting. As a result, the MLMQ-IR method has the best avg. mean rank with 1.86. The results manifest that the MLMQ-IR provides the most similar retrieved images to the query images owing to utilizing the variance which is the efficient and fast IR approach.