On the Perceptual Organization of Image Databases Using Cognitive Discriminative Biplots

Abstract

A human-centered approach to image database organization is presented in this study. The management of a generic image database is pursued using a standard psychophysical experimental procedure followed by a well-suited data analysis methodology that is based on simple geometrical concepts. The end result is a cognitive discriminative biplot, which is a visualization of the intrinsic organization of the image database best reflecting the user's perception. The discriminating power of the introduced cognitive biplot constitutes an appealing tool for image retrieval and a flexible interface for visual data mining tasks. These ideas were evaluated in two ways. First, the separability of semantically distinct image classes was measured according to their reduced representations on the biplot. Then, a nearest-neighbor retrieval scheme was run on the emerged low-dimensional terrain to measure the suitability of the biplot for performing content-based image retrieval (CBIR). The achieved organization performance when compared with the performance of a contemporary system was found superior. This promoted the further discussion of packing these ideas into a realizable algorithmic procedure for an efficient and effective personalized CBIR system.