Effective image retrieval using deformable templates

Image retrieval by contents from database is a major research subject in advanced multimedia systems. Effective image retrieval by contents requires that visual image properties are used instead of textual labels to properly index and recover pictorial data. Retrieval by shape similarity given a user-sketched template is particularly challenging, owing to the difficulty to derive a similarity measure that closely conforms to the common perception of similarity by humans. In this paper we present a technique which takes into account global shape properties and is based on elastic matching of sketched templates over the shapes in the images to evaluate similarity ranks. The degree of matching achieved and the elastic deformation energy spent by the sketch to achieve such a match are used to derive a measure of similarity between the sketch and the images in the database and to rank images to be displayed