SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PERFORMING REGION-BASED IMAGE RETRIEVAL USING COLOR-BASED SEGMENTATION.

摘要

There is disclosed an image retrieval system for analyzing an image in a first color model format and detecting and retrieving from the image a selected image portion. The image retrieval system comprises an image processor for converting pixels in the image from the first color model format to a (Yr theta ) color model format, where Y is an intensity component indicating a total amount of light, r is a saturation component indicating an amount of white light mixed with a color of each pixel, and theta is a hue component indicating the color of each pixel. The image processor groups spatially adjacent pixels into image regions according to hue components of the adjacent pixels and performs a merging process wherein a first image region and an adjacent second image region are merged into a composite region if a hue difference between the first and second image regions is less than a predetermined hue difference threshold. The process is repeated to continually merge regions of similar hue until no further merges can be performed.