<title>Similarity-based retrieval of images using color histograms</title>

Abstract

The color histogram of an image has been widely used as a feature descriptor for the image in content-based retrieval applications. In this paper, we report some results from our investigation efforts into its usage. We outline three typical color space quantization schemes used in our experiments, and introduce the soft-decision histogramming method to eliminate the discontinuity problem in traditional color histogram population process. Then, to improve the effectiveness of color histogram-based retrieval algorithms, several similarity metrics are proposed for comparing color histograms, including three special forms of the Kantorovich metric.