Mining Multiple Queries for Image Retrieval: On-the-Fly Learning of an Object-Specific Mid-level Representation

In this paper we present a new method for object retrieval starting from multiple query images. The use of multiple queries allows for a more expressive formulation of the query object including, e.g., different viewpoints and/or viewing conditions. This, in turn, leads to more diverse and more accurate retrieval results. When no query images are available to the user, they can easily be retrieved from the internet using a standard image search engine. In particular, we propose a new method based on pattern mining. Using the minimal description length principle, we derive the most suitable set of patterns to describe the query object, with patterns corresponding to local feature configurations. This results in a powerful object-specific mid-level image representation. The archive can then be searched efficiently for similar images based on this representation, using a combination of two inverted file systems. Since the patterns already encode local spatial information, good results on several standard image retrieval datasets are obtained even without costly re-ranking based on geometric verification.