A Lazy Processing Approach to User Relevance Feedback for Content-Based Image Retrieval

User Relevance feedback techniques based on learning methods such as Artificial Neural Networks and kernel machines have been widely used in content-based image retrieval. However, the traditional relevance feedback framework for existing techniques still suffers from: (1) high learning cost incurs substantial delay in responding to user relevance feedback, (2) the classifiers may be biased when the negative feedback samples out-number the positive feedback samples, and (3) The high feature dimensions compared to the size of the training set causes over fitting. We propose a new relevance feedback approach based on a lazy processing framework. This approach combines random sampling, data clustering, and ensembles of classifiers to address the aforementioned problems. Our experimental studies show that the proposed framework provides a responsive user feedback environment that is capable of outperforming the traditional approach.