Image retrieval by partial queries

We focus on the problem of partial queries on content-based image retrieval. We first address the problem of region of interest delimitation through image segmentation by color clustering. We present a robust agglomerating clustering algorithm based on cluster validity criteria derived from fuzzy partitions. We secondly address the problem of color similarity measurement between partial queries using the clustering information obtained from the segmentation stage. We present results to assess the effectiveness of both the segmentation algorithm and retrieval process on a large collection of real-world images.