Pattern Anal Applic (2013) 16:69–81
DOI 10.1007/s10044-011-0207-0
THEORETICAL ADVANCES
Rotation invariant features for color texture classification
and retrieval under varying illumination
B. Sathyabama • M. Anitha • S. Raju •
V. Abhaikumar
Received: 27 April 2010 / Accepted: 3 March 2011 / Published online: 22 March 2011
Ó Springer-Verlag London Limited 2011
Abstract This article proposes a new quaternion-based
method for rotation invariant color texture classification
under illumination variance with respect to direction and
spectral band. The color of an object varies according to
the spectral power distribution, object-illumination, and
viewing geometry of the light source. The quaternion
representation of color is shown to be effective, which
treats color channels as single unit rather than separate
components. New texture signatures are extracted by cal-
culating the norm of the Quaternion fourier spectrum.
These signatures are proved to be invariant under image
rotation and illumination rotation. Moreover, these features
are also invariant to the color spaces. The robustness of
different color spaces against varying illumination in color
Texture classification with 45 samples of 15 outex texture
classes are examined. Comparative results show that the
proposed method is efficient in rotation invariant texture
classification.
Index terms Quaternion  Quaternion fourier transform 
Rotation invariant color texture classification
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this
article (doi:10.1007/s10044-011-0207-0) contains supplementary
material, which is available to authorized users.
B. Sathyabama (&)  M. Anitha  S. Raju  V. Abhaikumar
Electronics and Communication Engineering,
Thiagarajar College of Engineering,
Thiruparankundram, India
e-mail: sbece@tce.edu
URL: http://www.tce.edu/receiving
M. Anitha
e-mail: mmanitha2005@gmail.com
S. Raju
e-mail: rajuabhai@tce.edu
1 Introduction
The escalating growth of computer vision applications has
increased the need for faster and more accurate image
analysis algorithms. One application of image analysis that
has been studied for a long time is texture analysis
[1].Texture classification and retrieval are subsets of tex-
ture analysis that are particularly well suited for the auto-
matic grading of products such as ceramic tiles, textiles,
foliage, wood, and granules. Early methods for texture
classification focus on the statistical, structural, model
based and signal processing analysis of texture images. The
representative methods include the co-occurrence matrix
method [2], Morphology-based approaches [3], Markov
Random Fields and wavelet transforms [4]. In general their
classification results are good as long as the training and
test samples have identical or similar orientations [5].
However, the rotations of real- world textures will vary
arbitrarily, severely affecting the performance of the for-
mer methods and suggesting the need for rotation invariant
methods of texture classification [6].
Rotation invariant texture analysis can be obtained
either via learning of rotation invariance during a train-
ing phase or through the extraction of rotation invariant
features from the input textures. Kashyap and Khotanzad
[7] were one among the first researchers to study rota-
tion-invariant texture classification using a circular
autoregressive model. Further, the multi resolution auto-
regressive model, hidden Markov model, Gaussian
Markov random field model, and the auto correlation
model have been proposed by various researchers. Many
Gabor and wavelet-based algorithms were also proposed
for rotation invariant texture classification. However,
such methods do not consider the effect of rotation of the
illuminant direction.
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The direction of illumination has a binding influence on
the directional characteristics of texture images. Thus, image
forming process under directed illumination of texture acts
as directional filter. It implies that the directional properties
of texture are not intrinsic to the surface, but they are con-
siderably affected by the variation in illuminant tilt. Majority
of texture feature sets used in classification and retrieval
exploits the directional characteristics. Among the work
reported in texture classification only very few includes the
effect of illumination in grayscale images [8].
However, the color of the image can aid the process of
texture classification and retrieval [9]. The perceived color
of the surface is determined not only by the color of the
surface but also by the color of the light. Changes in the
angle of illumination incident upon a surface texture can
also significantly alter the color characteristics.
A comprehensive review of the techniques which deals
with color texture can be found in [10, 11]. It can be
classified into three groups: parallel, sequential, and inte-
grative [12]. Parallel approaches consider texture and color
as separate phenomena. In sequential approaches the first
step is applying a color indexing method to the original
color images. As a result the indexed images can be
processed as grayscale textures. In this framework the
co-occurrence matrix has received a great deal of attention,
due to its straightforward extension to indexed images [13].
Integrative models are based on the spatial relationship of
pixels. These approaches [14] can further be subdivided
into single-band if data are considered separately from each
channel or multiple-band if two or more channels are
considered jointly.
Further Multiple-band approaches have also been
obtained as extensions of classical grayscale texture
descriptors, such as wavelets, Gabor filters, co-occurrence
matrices, log polar transform, Local Binary Patterns and
Markov Random Fields. In order to achieve illumination
invariance color information is vital[15].In the above
mentioned methods classical grayscale texture descriptors
are applied to each color channel separately which in turn
results in loss of information [16].
This article proposes a Quaternion-based rotation
invariant classification method for color textures with
illumination changes. This article presents the overview of
the proposed rotation invariant texture classification
scheme in Sect. 2 and the texture classification and
retrieval experimental results in Sect. 3. Finally, Sect. 4
concludes this article.
2 Rotation invariant texture classification
The method presented here relies on two building blocks: a
rotation and illuminant invariant classification and retrieval
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Pattern Anal Applic (2013) 16:69–81
of color textures. Fig. 1 shows the complete rotation
invariant texture classification scheme using quaternion. A
color image pixel may be converted to a quaternion pixel
by placing the three components (such as the red, green,
and blue components in the case of RGB images) into the
three imaginary parts of the quaternion, leaving the real
part zero. Fourier spectrum for the formed Quaternion is
obtained using QFFT. Radial plot is plotted and the rota-
tion invariant Texture Signatures, Peak Distribution Norm
Vector (PDNV) is computed for both the rotated and
unrotated textures. Then the classification and retrieval
results are obtained by calculating Sum of square distance
(SSD) of PDNV between training and test textures.
2.1 Illumination
The image intensity Iðm; nÞof a surface is represented using
Lamberts law as,
Iðm; nÞ ¼ n  L ð1Þ
where, n is the unit vector normal to the surface at the point
(m, n) and
L ¼ ðcos s sin r; sin s sin r; cos rÞ ð2Þ
is the normalized illumination vector toward the light
source. Here, s and r are the tilt and slant angles, respec-
tively, both measured with respect to illumination as shown
in Fig. 2. The amount of illumination depends on the angle
of rotation of illumination source. Thus, it implies that an
image forming process using directed illumination acts as a
directional filter of texture image which can be measured as
Input
Quaternion Formation
Fourier spectrum using QFFT
Radial Plot
Rotation Invariant Texture
Signatures
Classifier
Fig. 1 Texture classification using quaternion
Pattern Anal Applic (2013) 16:69–81
Fig. 2 Definition of axis and illumination angles
an angular variation. Such an effect is likely to have
important implications for texture classification schemes.
2.2 Role of illumination in color texture
Color is an important aspect of any object recognition
scheme as color changes considerably with the variation in
illumination, object pose, and camera viewpoint. It pro-
vides a high-discriminative information cue robust against
unreliable imaging conditions.
Changes in environment illumination usually alter the
resultant images acquired by the camera, causing colors to
appear different which is known as the color constancy
problem [17].Generally the color components (R, G, and B
for example) are handled as separated monochromatic
images. This method is satisfactory for linear filtering
operations and so on, but it is not adequate for more
sophisticated image analysis involving correlation between
images which may have been captured under different
illumination conditions. The spectral stability of illumina-
tion is an important aspect in color machine vision. The
physical properties of lamps may change the spectrum of
the illumination with time [18]. The reflection from each
color channel varies, due to the change in illumination,
therefore consideration of illumination changes while
defining the rotation invariant feature for color texture
gives significant results in both classification and retrieval.
2.3 Quaternion for color
Quaternions are popular in mathematics, Physics, and
engineering for decades [19]. Using Quaternions to repre-
sent colors, has recently been proposed and studied [20].
Color sensitive filtering can be achieved using a quaternion
valued filter [21]. There are two color edge detection
methods defined on quaternions [22]. One is based on the
chromaticity cancellation that generates a gray color for
non-boundary regions; the other is based on estimation of
homogeneity of regions. Quaternion-based trilateral filter-
ing is proposed by locally adapting color and changing the
shape of the filter to achieve the effect of smoothing colors
yet preserving edges. Furthermore, Quaternion Fourier
analysis has been implemented efficiently by decomposing
71
it into complex Fourier equivalence, which allows convo-
lution and cross correlation on quaternion-valued images in
the frequency domain [23]. Further quaternion texture
analysis, quaternion singular value decomposition and
quaternion principal component analysis are implemented
and applied to several applications, such as segmentation of
color images [24].
The quaternion representation of color is shown to be
effective in the context of color texture analysis in dig-
ital color images [25]. The advantage of using quaternion
arithmetic is that a color can be represented and ana-
lyzed as a single entity. A color texture sample projected
onto a subset of quaternion basis provides a concise
description of the texture. Quaternions provide a new
way to process color and texture in combination. The
advantage of the quaternion representation for color
image I(m, n), as proposed by Sangwine, combines a
color 3-tuple (RGB or LMS) of I(m, n) into a single
hyper complex number as.
Iq ðm; nÞ ¼ Rðm; nÞi þ Gðm; nÞj þ Bðm; nÞk ð3Þ
A color can then be processed as a unit, rather than as three
separate channels. Three color channels of each pixel is
converted into a quaternion pixel by placing the three
components into the three imaginary parts of the quater-
nion, leaving the real part zero and making it as purely
imaginary quaternion.
2.4 Rotating with quaternions
Rotation operator for any vector, with h rotation around
unit direction ‘n’ can be represented by
Rh ¼ ðcosðh=2Þ; n sinðh=2ÞÞ ð4Þ
Here, the 3D vector (0, Iq) rotated by h can be written as,
 
R Iq ¼ R1h  I q  Rh ð5Þ
Since
 
R½Iq  ¼ ðcosðh=2Þ; n sinðh=2ÞÞ  0; Iq
 ðcosðh=2Þ; n sinðh=2ÞÞ
 
¼ 0; Iq ðcos2 ðh=2Þ  sin2 ðh=2Þ
 
þ 2n n  Iq sin2 ðh=2Þ
 
þ 2 n  Iq cosðh=2Þ sinðh=2Þ
 
¼ ð0; Iq cos h þ n n  Iq ð1  cos hÞ
 
þ n  Iq sin h
This form of rotation representation is used here to include
rotation and illumination changes. Illumination changes
will result in the form of angular variations h1, which is
described in Sect. 2.1. Apart from this the texture’s image
rotation is also measured in terms of angular variations.
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This totally provides a set of angular changes (h1 and h2)
where h1 represents the illumination rotation, and h2 rep-
resents image rotation.
According to the illumination changes, the vector Iq
rotated by h1 is represented as,
 
Rh1  Iq  Rh1 ð6Þ
where,
Rh1 ¼ ðcosðh1 =2Þ; n sinðh1 =2ÞÞ
and further by h2 is represented as
   
Rh2  Rh1  Iq  Rh1  Rh2
where,
Rh2 ¼ ðcosðh2 =2Þ; n sinðh2 =2ÞÞ
This can be represented as,
   
Rh2  Rh1  Iq  Rh1  Rh2 ¼ ðRh2  Rh1 Þ  Iq  ðRh1  Rh2 Þ
¼ ð Rh 2  Rh 1 Þ  I q  ð Rh 1  Rh 2 Þ
ðcosðh1 =2Þ; n sinðh1 =2ÞÞ  ðcosðh2 =2Þ; n sinðh2 =2ÞÞ
¼ ðcosðh1 =2Þ cosðh2 =2ÞÞ  ðsinðh1 =2Þ sinðh2 =2ÞÞ;
nðsinðh1 =2Þ cosðh2 =2Þ þ cosðh1 =2Þ sinðh2 =2ÞÞ
¼ ðcosððh1 þ h2 Þ=2Þ; n sinððh1 þ h2 Þ=2ÞÞ
From the above equation, it is inferred that, rotation of any
Quaternion by h1 and then by h2 is equivalent to rotation by
h1 ? h2. Hence any rotation invariant texture signature in
the Quaternion domain will be invariant to both orientation
and illumination changes.
2.5 Quaternion fourier transform
The QFT plays a vital role in the representation of signals
and images. The idea of computing Quaternion fourier
transform (QFT) of a color image has only recently been
realized. It is possible, of course, to separate a color image
into three scalar images and compute the Fourier trans-
forms of these images separately, but this study concerns
with the computation of a single, holistic, Fourier trans-
form which treats a color image as a vector field. This
transform cannot have a single complex transform, since
color images have inherently 3-D pixels (regardless of the
color space in which they are represented).
The QFT was first proposed by Ell [26]. Ell also intro-
duced the use of the QFT in the analysis of 2D linear time
invariant dynamic systems. Later, an extended investiga-
tion of important properties of the two-sided QFT mainly
for real signals were made and applied to signal and image
processing. The first application of a QFT to color images
was reported in 1996 by Sangwine using a discrete version
of Ell’s transform.
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Pattern Anal Applic (2013) 16:69–81
The discrete quaternion fourier transform of an image
Iq (m, n) for two variables based on Ell’s formula is
X
1 X
N 1
1 M
e2plð M þ N Þ Iq ðm; nÞ
mu nv
Fq ðu; vÞ ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ð9Þ
MN m¼0 n¼0
where the discrete array f(m, n) is of dimension M 9 N.
The inverse transform is
1 M X
1 X
N 1
e2plð M þ N Þ Fq ðu; vÞ
mu nv
Iq ðm; nÞ ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ð10Þ
MN u¼0 v¼0
It transforms an image into a quaternion-valued frequency
ð7Þ
domain signal. Here the fast algorithm of Quaternion
fourier transform (QFFT) has been employed.
An important point is that the QFT depends of the
definition of l which is any unit pure quaternion [23]. Such
a transform can be easily computed using classical Fourier
transforms and symplectic decomposition. The QFT is
separable, and may thus be evaluated by 1D summation
over rows and columns of the input array, or it may be
evaluated by a fast algorithm.
These facts of hyper-complex Fourier transforms have
shown their applicability by allowing generalizations of
many image processing techniques dependent on Fourier
ð8Þ transforms to color. In particular, using the more recent
transform definition, the validity of hyper complex auto
and cross-correlation, and vector phase correlation has
been proposed. Pei et al. [28] published a work on the
efficiency of the computation of Quaternion fourier trans-
forms and linear quaternion filters. Bülow and Sommer
[16] have published work on hyper complex Fourier
transforms applied to grayscale images. They utilized a
hyper complex Fourier transform because of its symmetry
properties when applied to real-valued images but they
haven’t considered application of the transform to invariant
texture analysis of color images.
2.6 Rotation invariant texture signatures
The Rotation invariant texture signatures are extracted
from the radial plot of the Fourier spectrum. The radial plot
F(0)
F(1)
F(2)
F(n)
Fig. 3 Radial Plot computation from QFFT spectrum
Pattern Anal Applic (2013) 16:69–81 73

is calculated by integrating all the contributions at each should essentially be able to demonstrate that. This prop-
radial frequency in Fourier spectrum which is shown in erty of rotation invariance is achieved by these PDNV
Fig. 3. The peak distribution norm vector (PDNV), com- signatures.
puted from the radial plot provides a set of Rotation
invariant texture signatures.
Norm is taken to the Quaternion fourier spectrum. The 3 Experiment and results
Fourier of the Quaternion has both real and imaginary
components. However, the norm of Fourier of quaternion is To demonstrate the significance of the proposed approach,
always a real quantity. a set of texture classification and retrieval experiments
The norm N(Fq) is a real-valued function and the norm of a have been conducted. In the experimental activity, textures
product of quaternion satisfies the following properties. with a set of different illuminations are taken from outex
  database. Each texture in the database is captured using
N Rh ¼ N ð Rh Þ
    three different simulated illuminants provided in the light
and N Rh Rh ¼ NðRh ÞN Rh source: 2300 K horizon sunlight denoted as ‘horizon’,
    
N R F q ¼ N Rh Fq Rh 2856 K incandescent CIE A denoted as ‘inca’, and 4000 K
    fluorescent tl84 denoted as ‘tl84’ as shown in figure below
¼ N ðRh ÞN Fq N Rh
  ð11Þ Fig. 4.
¼ N ðRh ÞN Fq N ðRh Þ All the textures used are having orientations 30°, 45°,
 
¼ N Fq : 60°, 90°, 135°, 180°, 225°, 270°, 315°, and 360°. The size
of the original images is 746 9 538 pixels. For the
The norm of the unrotated vector Fq equates to the norm of
experiment, 100 9 100 sizes of samples are taken. The
the rotated version. The energy (amplitude), here the norm,
authors have used fifteen texture samples from this data-
of an image should be the same irrespective of the orien-
base and they are shown in the Fig. 5.
tation of the image and any transform applied to this image
3.1 Presentation of experimental results

This approach for the texture classification uses peak dis-

tribution norm vector (PDNV) of the Quaternion derived
from the radial plot as rotation invariant texture signature.
These rotation invariant texture signatures are compared
with those of training classes using a sum of square dis-
Horizon Inca tl84
tance (SSD) to provide rotation invariant texture classifi-
Fig. 4 Texture (seeds005) under three different illuminations cation. Results for each of these stages are given below.

Fig. 5 Input datasets

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74 Pattern Anal Applic (2013) 16:69–81

3.2 Rotation invariant texture signatures
Radial plot computed for the sample textures is given in
Fig. 6 which is insensitive to rotation and illumination [8].
This is the important characteristic of radial plot which
makes it a suitable feature for rotation invariant color
texture classification. It shows that radial plot will have
high energy content near the origin and progressively lower
values for higher frequencies. The energy of an image
should be the same irrespective of the orientation of the
image. This is achieved by calculating Peak distribution
norm vector of the quaternion radial plot. The proposed

250

200

150

100

50

0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50

Fig. 6 Input texture (Granular002), Spectrum and radial plot

Fig. 7 a Classification results

for outex textures.
b Classification results for
vistex textures

123
 Table 1 Sum of square distance for various textures using quaternion
Textures Barleyrice002- Canvas006- Wallpaper020- Granular002- Carpet006- Seeds013 - Flakes010- Seeds005- Wood012- Tile004- Canvas041- Chips023- Canvas040- Cardboard001 Gravel001 -
tl84-100dpi-00 tl84- tl84-100dpi-00 tl84- tl84- tl84- tl84- tl84- tl84- tl84- tl84- tl84- tl84- -inca- tl84-
100dpi-00 100dpi-00 100dpi-00 100dpi-00 100dpi-00 100dpi-00 100dpi-00 100dpi-00 100dpi-00 100dpi-00 100dpi-00 100dpi-00 100dpi-00

Barleyrice002- 1.8451 44.9666 42.2301 23.6765 21.0735 32.7590 13.0404 9.9124 8.2235 3.8830 16.5778 16.2075 11.9839 22.0712 29.8205
horizon-
100dpi-00
Canvas006- 46.5737 1.3226 88.1373 47.5374 25.3273 13.5672 33.3633 36.5057 38.3605 46.6691 29.9790 30.1407 34.3896 24.4449 16.7138
horizon-
100dpi-00
Wallpaper020- 37.7514 82.7944 4.3610 14.7236 59.1359 70.5363 50.8694 47.7224 45.8398 37.4491 54.1113 54.0464 49.8281 59.6415 67.3939
horizon-
Pattern Anal Applic (2013) 16:69–81

100dpi-00
Granular002- 17.0340 62.2539 24.7368 6.3102 38.4872 49.9979 30.2290 27.0804 25.2002 16.9754 33.6116 33.4266 29.2054 39.1566 46.9345
horizon-
100dpi-00
Carpet006- 24.5188 20.7815 66.0721 47.4073 4.1956 8.5289 11.3437 14.4618 16.2998 24.6053 7.9313 8.1023 12.3443 5.5306 5.6014
horizon-
100dpi-00
Seeds013 30.6594 14.6136 72.2726 53.6083 9.5295 2.5311 17.4575 20.5941 22.4586 30.8101 14.1449 14.2306 18.4816 8.6955 5.2824
-horizon-
100dpi-00
Flakes010- 17.5212 27.7906 59.0685 40.4018 4.8947 15.5388 4.4277 7.4868 9.3025 17.6040 1.2433 1.3635 5.4222 9.0320 12.5141
horizon-
100dpi-00
Seeds005- 9.3070 35.9897 50.9133 32.2505 12.3987 23.7470 4.0025 1.0056 1.1559 9.5237 7.4660 7.1724 3.1130 17.2460 20.7308
horizon-
100dpi-00
Wood012- 9.3332 36.1394 50.7207 32.0589 12.6557 23.8749 4.5132 1.9787 1.6970 9.2868 7.4776 7.4315 3.3806 17.3202 20.8011
horizon-
100dpi-00
Tile004- 4.3245 41.3742 45.4834 26.8235 17.8058 29.1168 9.4840 6.3722 4.5137 4.0855 12.7013 12.6129 8.4499 22.5473 26.0281
horizon-
100dpi-00
Canvas041- 17.5007 27.8143 59.1814 40.5272 4.2524 15.6106 4.4778 7.5153 9.3727 17.8123 2.6239 1.4401 5.3930 9.3832 12.8014
horizon-
100dpi-00
Chips023- 20.1027 25.7185 61.6626 43.0445 2.1686 13.6862 7.6980 10.4450 12.2332 20.5120 5.4551 4.8279 8.1168 8.1835 11.2760
horizon-
100dpi-00
Canvas040- 11.9839 34.3896 49.8281 29.2054 12.3443 18.4816 2.2794 3.1130 3.3806 8.4499 4.9064 14.1737 1.6270 14.7466 18.2296
horizon-
100dpi-00
Cardboard001- 25.1338 20.3433 66.5379 47.8850 5.5631 8.1601 12.0278 15.1126 16.9074 25.0885 8.4365 8.8500 13.0477 2.9238 4.9176
horizon-
100dpi-00
Gravel001 28.7547 16.7456 70.1625 51.5117 8.4336 4.6882 15.6169 18.7198 20.5251 28.7172 12.0597 12.4158 16.6384 2.2371 1.3062
-Horizon-
100dpi-00

Bold values indicate the place where the minimum sum of square distance achieved for the corresponding texture
75

123
 76

Table 2 Sum of square distance for various textures using Gray-FFT

Textures Barleyrice002- Canvas006- Wallpaper020- Granular002- Carpet006- Seeds013 - Flakes010- Seeds005- Wood012- Tile004- Canvas041- Chips023- Canvas040- Cardboard001 Gravel001 -
tl84-100dpi-00 tl84- tl84-100dpi-00 tl84- tl84- tl84- tl84- tl84- tl84- tl84- tl84- tl84- tl84- -inca- tl84-

123
100dpi-00 100dpi-00 100dpi-00 100dpi-00 100dpi-00 100dpi-00 100dpi-00 100dpi- 100dpi-00 100dpi-00 100dpi-00 100dpi-00 100dpi-00
000

Barleyrice002- 3.3236 34.7059 39.5061 44.7120 28.6726 49.6962 7.6014 18.1942 36.0083 31.6246 23.4432 41.7469 19.4364 55.0926 63.1888
horizon-
100dpi-00
Canvas006- 48.2927 14.2829 42.7792 47.5374 33.7857 20.9040 39.0053 36.7314 27.9759 34.9953 22.2183 32.0609 27.9019 32.2314 32.0984
horizon-
100dpi-00
Wallpaper020- 46.5173 36.2853 5.3312 8.8985 19.6179 33.8468 40.5580 30.5097 21.6926 15.9808 11.0473 20.0775 15.7130 26.6862 37.8403
horizon-
100dpi-00
Granular002- 53.4243 37.4511 16.2279 8.6043 27.6116 27.3410 46.3936 33.6194 20.0348 23.8916 22.0800 12.3964 24.9384 22.8817 34.4456
horizon-
100dpi-00
Carpet006- 38.9488 9.9494 23.3460 31.0602 13.7115 20.1727 29.8295 25.7425 15.0221 14.7895 9.6425 24.3856 18.7221 21.9262 27.3719
horizon-
100dpi-00
Seeds013 52.2966 20.5703 32.7696 33.9466 30.4654 5.7161 42.8758 34.1076 17.9851 29.4409 28.9808 21.4109 33.6597 19.7265 23.8152
-horizon-
100dpi-00
Flakes010- 15.1357 27.5866 27.7796 33.0922 17.7122 39.9873 9.6892 9.3036 25.1015 20.2225 19.4075 38.5676 16.7836 44.0590 52.9523
horizon-
100dpi-00
Seeds005- 29.8353 22.5573 22.6522 24.1342 17.6091 26.6836 22.1626 8.8806 12.3286 17.6052 13.3467 29.5192 7.1939 33.4568 43.1340
horizon-
100dpi-00
Wood012- 61.5482 35.3804 25.0058 23.0410 32.5984 19.7091 53.0735 41.8297 22.9903 29.3607 17.4440 13.8236 23.0545 11.4350 20.5776
horizon-
100dpi-00
Tile004- 38.9722 21.4896 10.1671 19.1277 7.5043 24.4835 31.1132 23.3582 12.1891 4.5189 7.5916 22.5624 16.4300 21.0630 30.6617
horizon-
100dpi-00
Canvas041- 15.7228 39.5132 40.6489 42.4328 26.1709 42.7994 7.0985 15.8759 44.0617 27.3030 14.2205 34.0452 16.0496 31.7312 40.4696
horizon-
100dpi-00
Chips023- 29.1740 35.7821 23.6551 20.5696 10.8815 28.4518 26.8416 11.8982 26.2054 16.0578 14.1737 8.6264 15.3742 26.4597 38.2907
horizon-
100dpi-00
Canvas040- 41.7469 32.0609 20.0775 12.3964 24.3856 21.4109 7.0104 29.5192 13.8236 22.5624 10.9685 28.0689 7.4445 33.1173 42.0001
horizon-
100dpi-00
Cardboard001 57.5478 27.9546 29.3124 28.6199 31.7947 9.1131 48.4534 37.9409 19.2160 29.5726 38.9047 23.8358 38.8723 13.6327 20.1170
-horizon-
100dpi-00
Gravel001 69.4027 34.5136 40.4730 43.4081 41.2330 22.2022 60.0088 52.8653 34.2493 39.6674 49.5201 40.8989 52.1863 15.0108 5.8563
-horizon-
100dpi-00
Pattern Anal Applic (2013) 16:69–81

Bold values indicate the place where the minimum sum of square distance achieved for the corresponding texture
Pattern Anal Applic (2013) 16:69–81 77

quaternion approach is compared with the existing (a) PRECISION

1
methods. Proposed QFT
0.95 Gray-FFT
Moment-Based
3.3 Texture classification 0.9 Color-GLCM

0.85
Many texture classification approaches have been pre-

Precision
sented in the past that are image-rotation invariant which 0.8
do not consider the illumination changes. In the proposed
0.75
approach the rotation invariant texture signatures are
extracted for the unrotated and rotated versions of texture 0.7

images by considering illumination effects. Then, the sum 0.65

of square distance (SSD) between the peak distribution
0.6
norm vector of the training and test textures are
calculated. 0.55
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
In order to prove the efficiency of the proposed
No of Retrievals
method in classifying textures, methods like Gray FFT,
Log Polar, Gabor have been included for comparison. (b) RECALL
0.8
The classification results for each texture at ten different Proposed QFT
angles of rotation are shown in Fig. 7. Sum of square 0.7
Gray-FFT
Moment-Based
distance (SSD) for each texture is compared and tested Color-GLCM
with all the textures in the outtex and vistex data bases 0.6

separately.
SSD computed using the proposed method for outex 0.5
Recall

database is tabulated in Table 1 and the results using Gray-

0.4
FFT are tabulated in Table 2. For texture barleyrice002 the
classifier was trained using 30° rotation and tested with all 0.3
the textures with different rotations in the data base. Using
Gray-FFT, the SSD of 3.3236 is obtained and by the pro- 0.2
posed QFFT approach 1.8451 is attained. Using Gray-FFT
five textures got minimum Sum of square distance with 0.1
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
different textures (mis classification), which is reduced to No of Retrievals
three in QFFT method.
(c) RETRIEVAL EFFICIENCY
For some selected 15 textures, the proposed method 100
yields a classification accuracy of 97.46 and 92.07, 83.55, Proposed QFT
95 Gray-FFT
and 76.46% are achieved by Gray FFT, Log Polar, and Moment-Based
Gabor methods, respectively, for outex data set. It can be 90 Color-GLCM
Retrieval efficiency

understood from Fig. 7a. Similarly for selected vistex 85

textures, classification accuracy of 91.09, 86.56, 81.56, and
77.21% are obtained for Proposed QFFT, Gray FFT, Log 80

Polar, and Gabor, respectively, and it is shown in Fig. 7b. 75

70
3.4 Retrieval results
65
Figures 8 and 9 show the results of correct retrievals and
60
retrieval efficiency for a variety of methods. Many different
methods for measuring the performance of a retrieval 55
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
system have been created and used by researchers. The No of Retrievals
most common evaluation methods namely, Precision and
Fig. 8 a Precision graph. b Recall graph. c Retrieval efficiency graph
Recall usually presented as a Precision versus Recall graph
is used here. Precision and recall alone contain insufficient
information. The authors can always make recall value 1 images or precision and recall should either be used toge-
just by retrieving all images. In a similar way precision ther or the number of images retrieved should be specified.
value can be kept in a higher value by retrieving only few Thus, three graphs: Precision versus No. of retrievals;

123
78 Pattern Anal Applic (2013) 16:69–81

Recall versus No. of retrievals; Precision versus Recall Retrieval efficiency

have been plotted for the conventional GLCM [2, 11], 8
> No: of relevant images retrieved
moment invariants [29], gray FFT methods and the pro- >
>
>
> Total no: of images retrieved
posed QFFT-based method. >
>
>
>
As can be seen in the Fig. 8a, b, the precision and recall > No: retrieved \= No relevant
>
>
<
values of the proposed method for different number of ¼ No: of relevant images retrieved
retrievals are greater than the conventional methods. >
>
> Total no: of relevant images
>
>
>
No: of relevant images retrieved >
>
Precision ¼ >
> otherwise
Total no: of images retrieved >
>
:
No: of relevant images retrieved
Recall = No: of non-relevant images retrieved
Total no: of relevant images in the database Error rate =
Total no: of images retrieved
Apart from Precision and Recall, the other measures of
performance evaluation are error rate and retrieval By the definition of retrieval efficiency, the authors can say
efficiency. These are defined as follows it depends on precision and recall. The same parameters

Fig. 9 a Retrieval efficiency

for outex textures. b Retrieval
efficiency for vistex textures

123
Pattern Anal Applic (2013) 16:69–81 79

Table 3 Average retrieval efficiency comparison COMPARISION OF COLORSPACES

300
Methods Outex (%) Vistex (%) RGB
LMS
QFFT 95.41 90.13 250 XYZ
YMU
Gray FFT 91.16 85.90

Norm Distribution
Log Polar 80.84 80.77 200

Gabor 73.71 76.33

150
precision, recall are computed for Gray FFT, Log polar,
and Gabor for outex and vistex dataset. From this Retrieval 100
efficiency is calculated which are shown in Fig. 9a, b, and
the average Retrieval efficiency is tabulated in Table 3. 50
The proposed method is proved to be the best when
compared to the other methods in terms of classification 0
and retrieval. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
Radial sampling frequency
3.5 Color space independence
Fig. 10 Comparison of color spaces

The effect of different color spaces in color texture clas-

sification is still subject of controversial debate in the COMPARISION OF COLORSPACES
250
computer vision community. A number of color spaces RGB
LMS
have been proposed that aim to make the image object data XYZ
robust to the presence of noise, illumination changes, 200 YMU
complex backgrounds, and poor quality image capture
Norm Distribution

equipment. These color spaces have been extensively 150

evaluated and it has been found that there is a considerable
variation in the results based on which color space is used.
Depending on which color space is chosen, very different 100

classification performances are observed using the same

texture features and the same experimental image data so
the choice of color space for texture analysis is crucial one.
To overcome this, some color normalization procedures
have been developed and they give some approximately
better results for various color spaces. But in Quaternion
representation the color is processed as a single entity.
Figure 10 shows the plot of the proposed texture feature
with respect to the radial distance for various color spaces.
From the figure it is understood that the point at which the
peak and valley occurs at same points for all the color
spaces.
The magnitudes of peaks are different for different color
spaces. If these magnitudes are normalized, the resultant
plot will provide color space-independent texture features
as shown in Fig. 11. Hence the proposed texture features
in quaternion domain provide color space-independent
features.
3.6 Efficiency
The effectiveness of classification accuracy for grayscale
version using FFT is comparatively low, so the authors prefer
using color image. In case of color image, color bands can be
processed in two ways. Separately computing FFT for
50
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
Radial sampling frequency
Fig. 11 Comparison of color spaces
individual bands or computing QFFT after combining three
bands together to a quaternion. The QDFT or its FFT
implementation QFFT requires fewer real multiplications
than three-complex DFT/FFTs and hence is more efficiently
computed for a color image, as well as requiring less mem-
ory. QDFT directly implemented would require 75% of the
real multiplications and additions required by three complex
DFTs. A 2D Cooley-Tukey decimation in space or frequency
requires 75% of the additions required by three-complex
FFTs of the same type, but the number of multiplications is
only slightly less at 8/9 of the number required by the three
complex FFTs. This is because, in the complex FFT, the
product of two twiddle factors may be evaluated by table
lookup, whereas in the QFFT this combination of two
twiddle factors may not be carried out because they are in
orthogonal complex fields. The QFFT of a RGB image with

123
80
M rows and M columns requires 8M2log2M real additions
and 8 M2(log2M - 1) real multiplications, the reduction in
multiplications being due to omitted unity twiddle factors in
the first stage of the algorithm.
The QFT opens up a very wide range of possibilities in
color image processing, since it allows the spectrum of a
color image to be handled as a whole rather than as sepa-
rate color component spectra. All the existing frequency
domain techniques which have been developed for com-
plex spectra and FFTs should generalize to quaternion
spectra and FFTs. There may be some cases where the non-
commutativity of quaternion multiplication will require
careful analysis. Further, there is scope for the use of the
QFT on monochrome images, because of the true 2D nat-
ure of the transform, as pointed out by Ell [26]. This has
not yet been explored. In digital signal processing, Ueda
and co-workers [27] has worked on digital filters with
hyper complex coefficients, mainly as a way of imple-
menting parallel real filters efficiently. Clearly, there is
scope to explore the application of this idea in image
processing, especially with color images.
4 Conclusion
In this article, a Novel Quaternion-based rotation-invariant
texture classification and retrieval has been proposed. The
rotation-invariant texture signatures, peak distribution
norm vector have been constructed from the radial plot of
the Quaternion fourier transform and were further used for
classification. The feature extraction process in Quaternion
domain has been quite efficient with less number of
mathematical computations as well as requiring less
memory. Experimental results show that the proposed
algorithm achieves high-classification accuracy and
retrieval efficiency for color images.
However, the emphasis of this paper has been on
extracting the rotation-invariant texture features. Further
improvement could be on investigating algorithms for
efficient texture segmentation.
Acknowledgment The authors are very much thankful to the
reviewers for their valuable comments and also to the Management
and Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering of
Thiagarajar College of Engineering for their support and assistance to
carry out this work.
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