Improving Image Search through MKFCM Clustering Strategy-Based Re-ranking Measure

Abstract The main intention of this research is to develop a novel ranking measure for content-based image retrieval system. Owing to the achievement of data retrieval, most commercial search engines still utilize a text-based search approach for image search by utilizing encompassing textual information. As the text information is, in some cases, noisy and even inaccessible, the drawback of such a recovery strategy is to the extent that it cannot depict the contents of images precisely, subsequently hampering the execution of image search. In order to improve the performance of image search, we propose in this work a novel algorithm for improving image search through a multi-kernel fuzzy c-means (MKFCM) algorithm. In the initial step of our method, images are retrieved using four-level discrete wavelet transform-based features and the MKFCM clustering algorithm. Next, the retrieved images are analyzed using fuzzy c-means clustering methods, and the rank of the results is adjusted according to the distance of a cluster from a query. To improve the ranking performance, we combine the retrieved result and ranking result. At last, we obtain the ranked retrieved images. In addition, we analyze the effects of different clustering methods. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is analyzed with the help of precision, recall, and F-measures.