Automated identification and retrieval of moth images with semantically related visual attributes on the wings

A new automated identification and retrieval system is proposed that aims to provide entomologists, who manage insect specimen images, with fast computer-based processing and analyzing techniques. Several relevant image attributes were designed, such as the so-called semantically-related visual (SRV) attributes detected from the insect wings and the co-occurrence patterns of the SRV attributes which are uncovered from manually labeled training samples. A joint probabilistic model is used as SRV attribute detector working on image visual contents. The identification and retrieval of moth species are conducted by comparing the similarity of SRV attributes and their co-occurrence patterns. The prototype system used moth images while it can be generalized to any insect species with wing structures. The system performed with good stability and the accuracy reached 85% for species identification and 71% for content-based image retrieval on a entomology database.