2013 International Conference on Control Communication and Computing (ICCC)
Content Based Image Retrieval System with
Fuzzified Texture Similarity Measurement
Sreena P. H.
Department of ECE
Govt. Rajiv Gandhi Institute of technology
Kottayam, India
sreenapathangalil@gmail.com
AbstractContent based image retrieval (CBIR) system is a
database management system for retrieval of images based on the
similarity of image content with the query image. In the proposed
CBIR system, Tamura texture features are extracted as image
content. To measure similarity of query image with images in
database, a fuzzified distance measure, fuzzy hamming distance
(FHD), is used. The database is sorted in the increasing order of
similarity measure, and made available to user. The proposed
technique is implemented in Matlab and its effectiveness is
verified using the standard Bordatz texture database.
Keywords- Content Based Image Retrieval, Fuzzy Hamming
Distance, Tamura texture features
I. INTRODUCTION
With increased accessibility to internet and low cost digital
storage devices, large amount of digital information is available
to common man. Taking the example of images, this large
volume of data is used in fields of education, entertainment,
commerce, biomedicine, and crime prevention. The highly
evolved, and much sophisticated visual system help human
beings to select the required image from a large image database
within a few minutes or less. But it is hard to teach a machine
the interpretation of what we see. Yet, tremendous efforts have
been made over the past few decades to make the machine
understand, index and annotate the pictures over wide range
with much progress. Image retrieval systems are such image
database management systems that try to understand the image
before presenting it to user.
Different image retrieval techniques are in use [1]. They are
categorized on the basis of nature of query like keyword based,
free text based, image content based, or composite of these.
Newer techniques, which use user interaction, help to reduce
the semantic gap between the retrieved images and user query
[2]. Early image retrieval techniques based on textual queries
became inadequate as a result of advances in internet and
digital image storage technologies [3]-[7]. The systems that use
the properties inherent to images would be able to handle large
image databases. The CBIR systems were developed on this
idea. A few commercial and experiment prototypes CBIR
systems such as QBIC [8], Photobook [9], Virage [10], Netra
[11], VisualSEEK [12], SIMPLIcity [13] have been developed.
The two important steps of CBIR are feature extraction and
similarity measurement. Commonly used content based
978-1-4799-0575-1/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE
David Solomon George
Department of ECE
Govt. Rajiv Gandhi Institute of technology
Kottayam, India
david@rit.ac.in
features or the low level features are color, texture and shape.
Features can be classified as general features- color, texture
and shape and domain specific feature- face, fingerprint, etc, as
they depend on application. As image perception differs for
different person, there is no single best feature representation.
A given feature has got multiple representations that
characterize the feature from different perspective.
Instead of exact matching, content based image retrieval
calculates visual similarities between a query image and
images in a database. Accordingly, the retrieval result is not a
single image but a list of images ranked by their similarities
with the query image. Many similarity measures have been
developed for image retrieval based on empirical estimates of
the distribution of features in recent years. Different
similarity/distance measures will affect retrieval performances
of an image retrieval system significantly. Various similarity
measures like Minkowski-Form distance, Quadratic Form
distance, Mahalanobis distance etc.are found in literature [14].
During 1990s fuzzy logic based approaches were brought in
image retrieval. Fuzzy histogram analysis helped to include
ambiguity and vagueness in perceiving color or texture [15]
[18]. A number of similarity measures for these fuzzy
histograms were also defined [19]. In 2003 Ralescu proposed
fuzzified version of the existing hamming distance measure
using color as feature [20]. It provides a fuzzy distance
measure between non-fuzzy real valued vectors. Thus without
fuzzification of existing feature vectors, the ambiguity in their
similarity is identified. Ionescu in his work used Fuzzy
Hamming Distance (FHD) to find similarity between color
histogram [21].
Fig. 1 gives general overview of a CBIR system. The first
step in developing a CBIR system is feature database creation.
The feature database should contain feature vector
corresponding to each image in the database. A feature vector
is selected depending on the nature of database and application
of the system. On presenting a query image to the system, its
feature vector is extracted and similarity/distance with all
feature vectors in database is measured. Images with largest
similarity or shortest distance are made available to the user
after sorting.
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Fig. 1. CBIR System Flow Chart
In this paper a CBIR system which extracts texture
features from images and compares it with that of database
images is proposed. A statistical texture measurement called
Tamura texture of the standard Bordatz database [22] is
extracted. Fuzzy modification of hamming distance, Fuzzy
Hamming Distance, is used for comparison of the images. The
system sorts the database in the increasing order of comparison
result, i.e., the distance measure between query image and
database images. The images with lowest distance measure are
the most similar images.
Tamura texture, statistical texture feature used in this
paper is discussed in section II. Section III discusses Fuzzy
Hamming Distance, fuzzy modification of hamming distance.
The experimental results of the proposed system on standard
Bordatz texture database are presented in section VI.
II. PROPOSED CBIR SYSTEM
CBIR system proposed in this paper uses Tamura texture
features for retrieval and fuzzy hamming distance as similarity
measure. Bordatz digital album is used as image database. The
steps for implementation of the proposed system are
Feature extraction
Similarity measurement
Aggregation and ranking
A. Feature extraction
As mentioned earlier Tamura texture features are used as
texture features. A set of six texture features taking on the basis
of human psychological experiments [23]. Tamura gave a set
of images from Bordatz album to a group of people and asked
to describe the texture. From the result mathematical
expression for six features were developed that effectively
describe all input patterns and were well distributed within
these patterns. The features include coarseness, directionality,
contrast, line-likeness, regularity and roughness. Many CBIR
have effectively used Tamura features for texture description
[8] [24].
Out of six three important Tamura features of all the
database images are extracted. Modified versions of
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coarseness, contrast and directionality are used. The other three
features, line-likeness, regularity and roughness are derived
from the former three features, hence not used.
Coarseness describes the size of the texture particles and its
measurement is given by size operator. Around each pixel, a
neighborhood of size 2k x 2k is defined (k = 0, 1 5). The k
value that maximizes the gradient of pixel values over non-
overlapping neighborhoods in both horizontal and vertical
orientation is taken as Sbest . A histogram of Sbest is made,
which is the coarseness feature vector of the image.
Contrast modification of image is usually done by
changing its gray level distribution. Tamura et al. also
considered other factors like dynamic range of gray levels,
polarization of the distribution of black and white on gray-level
histogram. The first is measured using the standard deviation of
grey levels and the second the kurtosis 4 . The contrast
measure is therefore defined as ratio of standard deviation and
nth power of 4 .
Directionality is measured as a global property, without
considering orientation. i.e., same figures with different
orientation should have same directionality. Histogram of local
edges probabilities against directional angles is used which is
shown to sufficiently represent global features of the input
picture as long lines and simple curves [25].
The features are stored in feature database. Instead taking
texture feature vector as element of 6-D space (corresponding
to 6 Tamura features), each of the 6 feature is taken as a vector.
A histogram of size measures Sbest is made with respect to
different values of 2k for k=0, 1...5. This forms vector for
coarseness. The directionality is represented by 16-D direction
histogram HD. Direct histogram measure for contrast doesnt
exist. So it is represented as a vector with each component the
contrast measure of one of the 128 x 128 image sub blocks.
Thus a small amount of spatial information is added to the
measurement.
B. Similarity measurement
After feature extraction query processing takes place. Fuzzy
Hamming distance, FHD is used as similarity measure. FHD is
fuzzy extension of hamming distance to real valued vectors
[20]. Hamming distance is the count of number of places two
real valued vectors differ. But FHD not only measure the
number of places they differ, but also the magnitude of
difference.
For computation of FHD, a difference fuzzy set is defined.
This is the fuzzy set with membership function equal to the
th
degree of difference, i.e. the degree to which i component of
the vectors differ.
D ( X ,Y ) (i) = d ( xi , yi )
(1)
2
= 1 e ( xi yi )
 Here i = 1, 2, n , where n is the dimension of the vectors nFHD = nCARD = {x; FHD ( x) > 0.5} (8)
and the variable parameter modulates the difference
xi yi . A is the closure of set A and A is the cardinality of A .
FHD is defined as the fuzzy cardinality of difference fuzzy nFHD is the number of points where D ( X ,Y ) is greater than
set. 0.5.
n
i The user inputs a query image of which similar images are
FHD = Card D ( X , Y ) (2) to be extracted from database. FHD between the query and all
i =0 Card D ( X ,Y ) (i ) the database images is measured. FHD measurements of
different features of the same image are made. Thus three
where
distance measurements are obtained. One in coarseness space,
Card D ( X ,Y ) (i ) = D ( X ,Y )(i ) ^ D ( X ,Y )(i +1) (3) one in directionality space, and one in contrast space.
C. Aggregation and Ranking
Values iof are defined as, Similarity measurement corresponding to each image is
1 = 0 1 2 n = 0 and ^ is the min operation. obtained as a set of similarity score. Lower the score, closer
will be the query to that image with respect to that feature.
FHD is the number of places where two vectors differ and its Aggregation module produces the weighted sum of these
membership function Card D ( X ,Y ) (i ) , is the degrees to which similarity scores. Here, a simple scoring technique is used
X and Y differs exactly at i components. which adds all the three similarity score. Ranking module is
nothing but a sorting module which ranks the database images
Selection of variable parameter needs attention because it in the increasing order of their aggregated scores. First 8
controls FHD sensitivity to the extent of variation. is selected images are retrieved as similar images to the query.
such that maximum bound is applied to the degree of
difference D ( X , Y ) . III. RESULTS
The proposed system was applied to 111 images of Bordatz
D ( x , y ) (i ) 1 (4) database in GIF format. The system is implemented in
MATLAB. Measurements for directionality and coarseness are
Subject to made without partitioning the image into sub images. Local
contrast measurements are taken by dividing images to 128 x
xi yi M (5) 128 pixel blocks. Query images from the same database and
certain other image sketches are also given to the system.
1 is the lower bound on membership value and M is Three images with features linelikeness, netlike and
lower bound on magnitude of difference. The lower bound M globelike are selected as query images. These images D15,
is selected as D20, and D30 of the Bordatz database are shown as the top
M = MAX (6) figure in Fig. 3 Fig .5.
Visually it is evident that D20 is most directional and D30
[0,1] and MAX is the maximum value in column is the least. Of these images, D30 is having the highest contrast
domain. If X = [ x1 , x2 xn ] and Y = [ y1 , y2 yn ] are two and coarseness while D20, is having the lowest. Directionality
feature vector given as a plot of local edge probability against
feature vectors, then MAX is another vector whose elements their directional angle for the three test queries is shown in Fig.
are maximum in corresponding columns. i.e., 2. The X axis of the histogram is obtained by quantizing the
MAX = [max( x1 , y1 ), max( x2 , y2 ) max( xn , yn )] . angle range 0 to in 16 directions. In the histogram, peak
occurs in direction in which most of the gradient vectors points.
From (1), (4), (5) and (6) The most directional image, D20 is having a sharp peak, where
as the non directional image, D30 has a flat histogram.
ln 1
= (7)
2 MAX 2
The difference between X and Y, greater than MAX, will be
used for calculating FHD since it cause a degree of change
greater than 1 .
The crisp value of the similarity is measured by
defuzzification of FHD. Here, non-fuzzy cardinality of fuzzy
set, i.e., non fuzzy approximation of fuzzy hamming distance is
taken.

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 final FHD measure. More similar the query to an image, the
lesser will be the FHD measure. The aggregation of the FHD
measures is done by adding the distances, giving unit weight to
each. The entire database is sorted in the increasing order of the
overall FHD measure. Those images in database with smallest
FHD measure are given to the user.

(a)

(b) (c)
Fig. 2. Directional probability histograms for the three test queries. (a) D15.
gif (b) D20. gif (c) D30.gif
D 20 0 D 51 10 D 101 11
Fig. 3 Fig. 5 show the query image and the images
retrieved from the database arranged in ranked orders. The
retrieved image with corresponding similarity score is given
below each image. For more similar images, smaller scores are
obtained and as score increases the similarity decreases.

D 102 11 D 103 13 D 104 13

Fig. 4. Top 6 retrieved images for query D20 from database.

D15 0 D 106 11 D 24 15

D 30 0 D 27 5 D 23 - 7

D 53 15 D 35 16 D 54 17

Fig. 3. Top 6 retrieved images for query D15 from database.

Three feature vectors corresponding to three Tamura

features directionality, coarseness and contrast, of the query D 31 8 D54 8 D 108 10
image are extracted. The FHD measures of the three feature
Fig. 5. Top 6 retrieved images for query D30 from database.
vectors of the query image with the corresponding feature
vectors of the Bordatz database images are found. Three
separate distance measures obtained are combined to get the

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 Not all the retrieved results shown in Fig. 3 Fig. 5 are
similar to the query. This occurs due to the simple unit weight
aggregation of the FHD measures. By adopting a non uniform
weighted aggregation technique better results can be obtained.
To compare the effectiveness of the system, sample
sketches of the texture are made and are presented as query
images. The results are presented in Fig. 6 Fig. 7. As
observed, most of the retrieved images have the prominent
feature of the query image, like the lines in Fig. 6, net in Fig. 7,
and globes in Fig. 8.

Fig. 8. Result with image sketches as query. The top most figure is the query
with globes as prominent feature.

Precision measures the retrieval accuracy of a CBIR

system. It is the ratio of number of relevant images retrieved to
total number of images retried. The relevant images are those
which satisfy the query to the system.

No. of relevant images retrieved

Precision =
Total No. of images retrieved

Fig. 6. Result with image sketches as query. The top most figure is the query The precision measures for the three queries in Fig 3 Fig
with lines as prominent feature.
5 are given in table I. Precision when the total number of
images retrieved is 5, 9, 15, 20 and 25 are given. The number
of relevant images is given in brackets.
TABLE III
PRECISION AT DIFFERENT NO. OF RETRIEVED IMAGES
Total No. of
Query 1 Query 2 Query 3
images retrieved

5 0.8 (4) 1 (5) 0.8(4)

9 0.5556 (5) 0.7778 (7) 0.5556(5)
15 0.4000 (6) 0.5333 (8) 0.4118 (7)
20 0.3000(6) 0.4000(8) 0.3500 (7)
25 0.2400 (6) 0.3200(8) 0.2800 (7)

Fig. 7. Result with image sketches as query. The top most figure is the query
with net like feature.
From the precision analysis it can be seen that when all the
database images are retrieved precision approaches zero. That
is the later retrieved images are irrelevant.
Since natural texture images are used, there can be some
sort of indecisiveness in some features. For example, one
cannot decide about the coarseness or contrast of image D15.
Similar is the case for coarseness of D20. This can reduce the
relevance of the retrieved images. Also, the retrieved results in
each of the test are subjective to user. One cannot make final
discussion on the relevance of the retrieved images, in the

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