A New Method for Image Classification by Using
Multilevel Association Rules
Vincent S. Tseng Ming-Hsiang Wang
Institute of Computer Science and Information Engineering
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan, R.O.C.
Email: tsengsm@mail.ncku.edu.tw
Abstract
With the popularity of multimedia applications,
the huge amount of image and video related to real
life have led to the proliferation of emerging storage
techniques. Contented-based image retrieval and
classification have become attractive issues in the
last few years. Most researches concerning image
classification focus primarily on low-level image
features (e.g. color, texture, shape, etc.) and ignore
the conceptual associations among the objects in the
images. In this paper, we propose a new image
classification method by using multiple-level
association rules based on the image objects. The
approach we proposed can be decomposed of three
phases: (1) building of conceptual object hierarchy,
(2) discovery of classification rules, and (3)
classification and prediction of images. At the first
phase, we use a hierarchical clustering method to
build the conceptual hierarchy based on the
low-level features of image objects. At the second
phase, we devise a multi-level mining algorithm for
finding the image classification rules. The
classification task is performed at the last phase.
Empirical evaluations show that our approach
performs better than other approaches in terms of
classification accuracy.
1. Introduction
For the past few years, due to the popularity of
multimedia applications and Internet, the capacity of
data storage increases rapidly and more and more
digital multimedia datum related to our life are
produced. To handle the huge amount of multimedia
information, multimedia data retrieval has become an
emerging research issue. In order to solve the
problems of data retrieval, Content-Based Image
Retrieval (CBIR) became the focus of the research in
these years [6][7][12][14]. Based on the multimedia
features like Color, Texture and Shape, the systems,
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Ja-Hwung Su
such as QBIC [7] and VisualSeek [18], can
effectively classify, index and retrieve multimedia
data. Image classification is a very important issue in
supporting CBIR and various multimedia
applications. Through the effective classification
method, we can organize large amount of multimedia
data well. Furthermore, it can greatly help construct
the multimedia databases and improve the
performance of multimedia data mining.
One of the new techniques for image
classification is data mining. Basically, image
association rules are generated by analyzing their
properties, such as object analysis, image feature
extraction and training on classified images for
building the correct category model
[1][3][10][11][15]. In this way, the unclassified
images can be automatically classified by generated
association rules. For the past few years, there exist
many approaches concerning image classification,
but most of them focus on using image feature
extraction to find the classification rules by using
methods like SVM and Decision Tree [3][10]. In fact,
the semantics of a whole image can not be
represented by segmentation and low-level features
of an image only. From human viewpoint, taking
advantage of the hierarchical relationships among the
image objects is an effective way for image
classification.
For example, both of yellow dogs and black dogs
are considered as belonged to the dog category.
Furthermore, the pets category includes yellow dog,
black dog, yellow cat and white cat. The association
rules describing the hierarchical relationships among
the objects will help us classify the image in the way
closer to human’s viewpoint. In previous researches,
Hierarchical Association Rule Mining Method [9]
has been found useful for discovering the
associations among hierarchical objects in
applications like market basket analysis. In this paper,
we propose a new image classification method by
using multilevel association rules. Our method can
be decomposed into three phases:
 1. Segment an image into several objects and distance between any two blobs is computed in
extract features from them, then automatically constructing the decision tree. Aghbari et al. [1]
construct a hierarchical feature tree of image exploits hill-climbing [15] and SVM (Support Vector
objects by hierarchical clustering. Machine) to segment a image into several objects
2. Generate the generalized association rules from and perform the image classification by the four
those segmented objects by using multilevel vector features extracted from these objects, namely
association rule mining methods. Here, we use color histogram, edge direction histogram,
a method improved on CBA (Classification higher-order autocorrelation edge vector and
Based on Associations) [13] method. dual-tree complex wavelet. Out of
3. Classify the newly input images automatically multiple-concept-level data, several studies
through the generated association rules. [8][10][11] were also made in proposing Multi-level
The remaining of this paper is organized as Association Rule Mining method to discover the
follows. In section 2, we describe briefly the past implicit generalized association rules from concept
researches and related work. Section 3 describes the taxonomy. The goal of this approach is to perform
proposed Multilevel Association Rule Mining-based the top-down deepening search progressively and to
image classification method in details. Experimental explore “level-crossing” association relationships. In
evaluation results are illustrated in Section 4. Finally, general, the combination of content-based retrieval
the conclusions and future work are given in section and multi-level association mining discussed in this
5. paper presents a new approach for the better image
classification with higher prediction power.
2. Related Work
3. The Proposed Method
At the present days, most of the image retrieval
systems hunt the images by the queried text The proposed method consists of two steps as
information. There exist some problems in this kind depicted in Figure 1:
of image retrieval approach. For example, different 1. Construction of Hierarchical Feature Trees:
users making different text requisitions may want to Construct each hierarchical feature tree in
capture the same images in fact. That is to say, it is terms of features like color, texture, and shape
difficult to make correct responses to the queries extracted from the image objects.
requested from different kinds of users. Thus, 2. Mining of Classification Rules:
another way to deal with the image retrieval is to Mine the association rules from the hierarchical
adopt the features vector for indexing the images. It feature tree established in step 1 by using the
is an interesting issue to search images on the basis multi-level association rules mining method.
of the contents of images, namely CBIR Thus, the class of new images can be predicted
(Content-Base Image Retrieval). CBIR takes by using the classification rules mined.
advantage of the image features like color, shape,
texture and location to organize and index the images.
The representative systems include QBIC by IBM
[7], Virage system by Virage Inc., Photobook System
by MIT Media LAB, etc.
In [12], Li et al. utilizes 2-D HMM (Hidden
Markov Model) to perform the binary classification.
The 2-D HMM employs features of segmentations
and relationships of these segmentations such that
the constructed model can discriminate between
manual and natural segmentations in one picture. In
1988, Szummer et al. [16] proposed another binary
classification approach, called KNN (K-Nearest
Neighbor), to do the binary classification. It
segments an image into several objects and then
extracts features form them through the DCT
(Discrete Cosine Transform) and spatial coordinate
of color. The classification tree proposed by Huang
et al. [10] is used to produce the classification model
for classifying the images. Carson et al. [4][5]
proposed efficient ways for representing a decision
tree in capturing the images. In their approach, the
images are divided into several objects, called blobs, Figure 1. Workflow of the proposed method.
and every blob contains two features, namely color
and texture. By making use of the features, the

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 In conducting image-object-based multi-level
association rules mining, we need the hierarchical
tree of image objects. Therefore, we proposed a
method to construct the multiple levels tree. First, we
segment each image into several objects and extract
their features by some specific methods. Then, we
construct a tree by using a hierarchical clustering
method improved on CURE method [8]. Then, we
find the Large Itemsets among the image objects by
using multi-level association mining method. At last,
the class of each large itemsets is generated to
produce the complete classification rules by using a
way similar to CBA [13]. For a new image to be
classified, the generated association rules are
deployed to determine the most relevant class for the
image efficiently and automatically.
3.1. Construction of Hierarchical Feature
Tree
The construction of hierarchical feature tree can
be divided into two steps:
1. Extract the objects and their features from the
images.
2. Construct the hierarchical feature tree by
performing hierarchical clustering.
3.1.1. Extraction of Image objects and Features
In our method, we need to analyze each image to
find the objects contained in it and extract three
features of each object, namely color, shape, and
texture. Since the issue of feature extraction is not
the focus in this work, we just adopted the public
software to achieve the goal of image objects
analysis and feature extraction. In this work, we use
the tool provided by Blobworld system
(http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu/photos/blobworld/) [4][5].
Blobworld is a CBIR (Content-Based Image
Retrieval) system developed by UC Berkeley Digital
Library Project. This system could automatically
segment an image into several objects, getting their
features and positions, and make use of the objects
for image query. The Blobworld system provides
both functions of image objects segmentation and
image query. In this research we only employ image
object segmentation and feature extraction in it. The
Blobworld system views similar regions of an image
as an object called blob, and the feature values of
each blob, like color, shape and texture are extracted
accordingly.
3.1.2. Hierarchical Feature Tree. After objects
segmentation and features extraction are done, we
need to construct a hierarchical feature tree for all
objects to support the mining of multi-level
association rules. However, it is difficult to construct
one single hierarchical objects tree for all images
with different features of an image object such as
color, shape, and texture considered simultaneously.
For example, suppose that there are three objects: a
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yellow cat, a yellow dog, and a black dog. If we
classify them by color, yellow cat and yellow dog
should be of the same class, and black dog belongs to
another class. However, when shape feature is
considered, black dog and yellow dog should be of
the same class and yellow cat belongs to another
class. Hence, it is hard to construct a single
hierarchical objects tree for all these features.
Furthermore, each feature has its special meaning
and dimension so that the way to calculate the
distance between two features is different, too.
Hence, it is necessary to construct a hierarchical
feature tree for each feature and then map the image
objects on the hierarchical feature trees, as illustrated
in figure 2.
For each feature tree, we design an effective
clustering method based on CURE [8] to do the
hierarchical clustering. In CURE clustering method,
given a parameter k, each node is set to be a cluster
and it combines two clusters with the shortest
distance into one. Then, the combination is repeated
until the cardinality of clusters is equal to k. However,
there is a critical problem when it is applied for
constructing the hierarchical feature tree. That is, if
each node of the tree recorded by CURE clustering is
viewed as a cluster, it is meaningless for those
generated association rules. For example, if there are
twenty thousand objects, each feature may have
twenty thousand different values, such as twenty
thousand colors, twenty thousand shapes and twenty
thousand textures. Among these twenty thousand
different colors, there might exist two colors which
are very similar in terms of their values. Therefore,
the multi-level association mining does not work if
we exploit every different color to be a leaf node in
color hierarchical feature tree. Hence, we modify the
CURE clustering method in constructing each
hierarchical feature tree. The final k clusters are our
real needs and the intermediate hierarchical relation
of clustering is out of our consideration. That is to
say, what we need is just the hierarchical relation
between clusters.
Figure 2. An example hierarchical feature tree.
 In order to solve the above problem, we do the
following modifications on the CURE method.
Given a parameter k, the initial process is performed
the same as CURE method until the cardinality of the
clusters is larger than k in constructing a hierarchical
feature tree. Once the cardinality of the clusters is
equal to k, the representative nodes of all clusters are
recorded as leaf nodes in hierarchical feature tree. In
this way, there will be k leaf nodes in the tree. Then,
the hierarchical clustering process is repeated for
choosing the two closest clusters and combining
them to form one new cluster. The new cluster
becomes the parent node of two small old clusters,
and they are inserted into the hierarchical feature tree.
The complete algorithm for constructing the
hierarchical feature tree is as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Algorithm for constructing hierarchical
feature tree.
3.2. Mining of Classification Rules
After the construction of hierarchical feature
tree, we employ the multi-level association mining
approach to generate the classification rules. This
procedure is decomposed into three steps:
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Step 1. Map the image objects on the hierarchical
feature tree.
Step 2. Make use of the multi-dimensional
multi-level association mining method to
discover the classification rules.
Step 3.Classify and predict the new un-classified
images by the classification rules generated at
step 1.
3.2.1. Mapping image objects on hierarchical
feature tree
This step maps each image objects on the leaf nodes
of the hierarchical tree we constructed as data
pre-processing for hierarchical association rules
mining. Each node of every hierarchical feature tree
is first encoded using pre-constructed taxonomy and
each image objects is mapped onto the specific code
of leaf node in the hierarchical feature tree. After
mapping, each image can be viewed as an image
transaction. As shown in Table 1, image 1 contains
three objects, namely A, B and C, and the mapping
result is as shown in Table 2. The three hierarchical
feature trees are constructed as depicted in Figure 2
Table 1. The image transaction table
Image Object
ObjectA (color3-1, shape3-2, texture3-4),
Image 1 ObjectB (color3-1, shape3-2, texture3-1),
ObjectC (color3-2, shape3-2, texture3-3)
Table 2. Mapping result
Image Object
ObjectA(11,21,21), ObjectB(11,12,11),
Image I
ObjectC(12,12,21)
3.2.2. Multi-dimensional Multi-level Association
Mining for Classification Rules
The process of mining classification rules can be
divided into two steps:
Step 1. Generation of large itemsets: discover all
large itemsets that exceed the specified
support threshold using multi-dimension
multi-level association mining method.
Step 2. Construction of classification rules: generate
the association rules viewed as classification
rules by improved CBA method from the
discovered large itemsets.
In step 1, it is on the basis of the two-dimensional
multi-level association mining [20] and we expand it
to the multi-dimensional multi-level association
mining. The cardinality of its dimensions is decided
by the cardinality of extracted features. In this paper,
we primarily extracted three features, namely color,
shape and texture. That is, we adopted
three-dimensional multi-level association mining to
generate the large itemsets. The complete algorithm
is illustrated in Figure 4.
 In this algorithm, the function gen_candidate(k) is
used to generate the candidate k-itemsets, which
contain k items. When k is equal to 1, that function
will generate all candidate 1-itemsets by calculating
the bottom level features of three trees (Tt.level,
Tc.level, Ts.level). Otherwise, the candidate
k-itemsets is generated from the large (k-1)-itemsets.
Function com_Large(k) utilizes candidate
(k-1)-itemsets to discover large k-itemsets, whose
supports are larger than minimum support set by
users.
the classification rules obtained through the
multi-dimensional multi-level association rules
mining. First of all, we segment an unknown image
into several objects and extracted their feature values
by Blobworld system. Next, we map them on the
hierarchical feature tree constructed and then the
classification rules are searched for matching the
unknown image. Because the length of large itemset
and the support value are both critical factors for the
probability of classification rules, the length, support
and every class probability of the large itemset are
multiplied together to find the most possible class
that image should belong to.
As an example, for a simple instance, suppose the
unclassified image has the large itemsets as shown in
Table 4.

Table 4. Large itemsets of an unclassified image.

Large Itemset Support Class Prob.
{(221,222,1212), Animal 0.30
(122,111,2212), 20 Plant 0.125
(111,121,1121)} Scenic 0.57
Animal 0.28
{(212,221,12),
50 Plant 0.05
(122,111,22)}
Food 0.66

According to our method described previously,

Figure 4. Multi-dimension multi-level association
rule mining algorithm.
After the generation of all large itemsets is done,
the probability of belonging to the specific class for
every large itemset is calculated by using a
CBA-based method. Through the probability
reasoning, the construction of classification rules is
then generated. That is, each large itemset constitutes
a classification rule. For example, suppose a large
itemset A is composed of (221, 222, 1212) and
(122,111, 2212), that is, this is a large 2-itemsets
{(221, 222, 1212), (122 ,111, 2212)}. Among ten
classified images containing this pattern, six belong
to Animal class, two belong to Plant class and the
other two belong to Scenic class. Consequently, the
probability of class membership for the large itemset
A is depicted in Table 3.
Table 3. The probability of large itemset A
Large Itemset Support Class Prob.
Animal 0.6
{(221,222,1212),
5 Plant 0.2
(122,111,2212)}
Scenic 0.2
3.2.3. Classification of New Images
In this section, we describe how to classify and
predict unclassified images automatically by using
the probability that image belongs to different classes
is as follows.
1. Animal Class:
P(Animal Class) = (3*20*0.3) + (2*50*0.28) =
46.6
2. Plant Class:
P(Plant Class) = (3*20*0.125) + (2*50*0.05)
= 12.7
3. Scenic Class:
P(Scenic Class) = 3*20*0.57 = 34.2
4. Food Class:
P(Food Class) = 2*50*0.66 = 66
Consequently, we determine that the image
belongs to food class because it bears the highest
probability. Therefore, the image is classified into the
Food class.
4. Experimental Evaluation
We have described the new approach for image
classification we proposed in the previous section.
Now we describe the results in evaluating the
performance of proposed method by experiments
using real image data. We have also tuned the
minimum support in multilevel association rules, k
value in the clustering and the cardinality of image
objects and extracted features. Through tuning these
parameters, the proposed method was compared with
general decision tree method (J48) and SVM. The
experiments were implemented in C++ on a

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 Pentium-4 1.6GHz personal computer with 256 MB precision is maintained at nearly 50%. When
RAM running on Windows 2000 Server. minimum support is raised to 0.05, the mined
classification rules are extremely few. Hence, the
classification precision degrades to nearly 10%.
4.1. Experimental Data
As shown in figure 7, when the minimum support
The image data in our experiments are from Corel is less than 0.005, the classification coverage is as
Gallery Professional Image Library, which contain good as 100%. This is because that most images will
several types of images including signs, backgrounds, be covered by the classification rules generated by
icons and so on. We choose ten thousand images the mining algorithm when higher-level
from one million images as datasets for our classification rules are produced. Notice that the
experiments. We choose the images with classes as coverage is still close to 90% even when the
shown in Table 5 from Corel Gallery image library minimum support is raised to 0.05.
manually and the size of each image is 192*128 or
128*192.
For the performance index, we defined two Table 5. The image classes in experiments.
measures, the Precision and Coverage for the Image Class Number Descriptor
classification tasks. The definitions of Precision and
Coverage are illustrated as follows: dog, bird, and
Animal 1900
fish, etc.
Car, airplane,
C _ Correct Transportation 1200
and boat, etc.
Pr ecision
Pr edicted Im ages Structure 1700 Building
People 1500 All kinds people
Pr edicted Im ages Plant 1100
Tree and flower,
Coverage etc.
Tested Im ages
Mountain, cloud,
Scenic 900
and sea etc.
Precision represents the ratio of the cardinality for
correctly classified images to the cardinality of Food 600 All kinds food
classified images. Coverage indicates anther ratio for Insect 300 All kinds insect
the cardinality of classified images to the cardinality
of all tested images. For example, given ten tested All kinds of
Artifact 800
images, if eight images are successfully predicted artifacts
and five images are correctly classified from the
eight predicted images, the Precision is 5/8 = 62.5%
and the Coverage is 8/10 = 80%.
Besides, we process our experimental data by
another feature extraction program, namely the XM
4.2. Experimental Results software provided by MPEG-7 official website
(http://www.lis.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de/research/b
In the first experiment, we evaluate the number v/topics/mmdb/e_mpeg7.html). This program does
of rules and classification precision under different not perform the image object segmentation, so the
minimum support setting in our proposed feature values are extracted from the whole image
multi-dimensional multi-level association mining directly. We utilized six features and submitted them
method. We varied the minimum support from 0.001 to the Decision Tree and SVM modules for
to 0.05 and observed the variation of quantity of classifications. These six features are ColorStructure,
mined rules and the precision measure for image ColorLayout, RegionShape, ScalableColor,
classification. As shown in figure 5, nearly 6,000 Homogeneous and EdgeHistogram. The Decision
classification rules are generated when the minimum Tree used here is J48, which is included in WEKA
support is 0.005 and the quantity of the classification based on C4.5 decision algorithm. Finally, we
rules raises to nearly 40,000 when the minimum compare the performance results with the proposed
support is 0.001. However, when the minimum multilevel association mining method with minimum
support is smaller than 0.05, the number of produced support set as 0.002.
classification rules is less than 100. Compared with
figure 6, when the minimum support is 0.001, the
classification precision is close to 55%. Though the
classification rules are much less than 40,000 as the
minimum support setting is 0.005, its classification

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 Figure 5. Number of Patterns under different
minimum support settings.
Figure 6. Precision at different support values.
Figure 7. Coverage at different minimum support
settings.
Figure 8 illustrates the precisions of the proposed
method, J48 and SVM. Obviously, the proposed
method delivers higher precision than J48 and SVM
when the feature leaf nodes are more than 50, with
improvement rate around 15%. A noteworthy point is
that only three image features, namely color, shape,
and texture, are used in our method although more
features can be absorbed in our method. Hence, it is
expectable that our method can deliver even higher
accuracy in classification if more kinds of image
features are incorporated.
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Figure 8. Comparisons of Precision.
5. Conclusions and Future Work
In this paper, we have proposed a new method
to construct the image classification rules by using
the hierarchical association relations among the
image objects. The experimental results show that
the proposed method outperforms other classification
methods like C4.5 and SVM in terms of
classification accuracy even though only three kinds
of image features are considered. The main
techniques for the proposed method are as follows.
1. Construction of Hierarchical Feature Tree:
Construct the hierarchical structure of objects
based on the extracted low-level features
(Color, Texture and Shape) by conducting
multilevel clustering on image objects.
2. Mining of Classification Rules:
By utilizing the hierarchical features tree
constructed, we devise a multi-dimensional
multi-level association mining method to find
the large itemsets. Furthermore, a CBA –based
method is designed to predict the class for new
images.
In the future, we will explore the following issues
from the viewpoint of data mining:
1. In extraction of image object features, we will
consider more feature vectors to achieve more
rich multi-dimensional multi-level association
mining so as to increase classification
precision further.
2. The task of object segmentation in Blobworld
system leaves room for improvement. We shall
integrate other more effective methods for
improving further the accuracy. Therefore, we
can increase classification precision by
complete objects segmentation.
3. Since the proposed multi-dimensional
multi-level association mining method is based
on Apriori [2], it incurs high execution cost. We
will do further enhancement on the algorithm
improve the execution performance.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This research was supported by Ministry of
Economic Affairs, R.O.C., under grant no.
92-EC-17-A-02-51-024.
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