Content Based Image Retrieval Using Exact Legendre Moments and Support Vector Machine

Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) systems based on shape using invariant image moments, viz., Moment Invariants (MI) and Zernike Moments (ZM) are available in the literature. MI and ZM are good at representing the shape features of an image. However, non-orthogonality of MI and poor reconstruction of ZM restrict their application in CBIR. Therefore, an efficient and orthogonal moment based CBIR system is needed. Legendre Moments (LM) are orthogonal, computationally faster, and can represent image shape features compactly. CBIR system using Exact Legendre Moments (ELM) for gray scale images is proposed in this work. Superiority of the proposed CBIR system is observed over other moment based methods, viz., MI and ZM in terms of retrieval efficiency and retrieval time. Further, the classification efficiency is improved by employing Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. Improved retrieval results are obtained over existing CBIR algorithm based on Stacked Euler Vector (SERVE) combined with Modified Moment Invariants (MMI).

Image Compression and Watermarking scheme using Scalar Quantization

This paper presents a new compression technique and image watermarking algorithm based on Contourlet Transform (CT). For image compression, an energy based quantization is used. Scalar quantization is explored for image watermarking. Double filter bank structure is used in CT. The Laplacian Pyramid (LP) is used to capture the point discontinuities, and then followed by a Directional Filter Bank (DFB) to link point discontinuities. The coefficients of down sampled low pass version of LP decomposed image are re-ordered in a pre-determined manner and prediction algorithm is used to reduce entropy (bits/pixel). In addition, the coefficients of CT are quantized based on the energy in the particular band. The superiority of proposed algorithm to JPEG is observed in terms of reduced blocking artifacts. The results are also compared with wavelet transform (WT). Superiority of CT to WT is observed when the image contains more contours. The watermark image is embedded in the low pass image of contourlet decomposition. The watermark can be extracted with minimum error. In terms of PSNR, the visual quality of the watermarked image is exceptional. The proposed algorithm is robust to many image attacks and suitable for copyright protection applications.