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Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 1379–1384Cite as

Image Similarity

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Synonyms

Image Distance; Visual Similarity; Similarity Measure

Definition

Given a pair of images each described by a feature set, image similarity is defined by comparing the feature set on the basis of a similarity function. In a typical Visual Information Retrieval system, while searching for a query image among the elements of the data set of images, knowledge of the domain will be expressed by formulating a similarity measure between the query and data set based on some visual features. Therefore, measuring meaningful image similarity consists of two intrinsic elements: finding a set of features for adequately describing the image content and finding a suitable metric for assessing the similarity on the basis of feature space. The feature set can be computed globally for the entire image or locally for a small group of pixels such as regions or objects. The similarity measure can be different depending on the types of features. Typically, the feature space is assumed to be...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Microsoft Research Asia, Beijing, China

    Tao Mei

  2. Microsoft China R&D Group, Redmond, WA, USA

    Yong Rui

Authors
  1. Tao Mei
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  2. Yong Rui
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

    LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Mei, T., Rui, Y. (2009). Image Similarity. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_1014

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