Distance measures for color image retrieval

We address the issue of image database retrieval based on color using various vector distance metrics. Our system is based on color segmentation where only a few representative color vectors are extracted from each image and used as image indices. These vectors are then used with vector distance measures to determine similarity between a query color and a database image. We test numerous popular vector distance measures in our system and find that directional measures provide the most accurate and perceptually relevant retrievals.