FIRM: Fuzzily integrated region matching for content-based image retrieval

We propose FIRM (Fuzzily Integrated Region Matching), an efficient and robust similarity measure for region-based image retrieval. Each image in our retrieval system is represented by a set of regions that are characterized by fuzzy sets. The FIRM measure, representing the overall similarity between two images, is defined as the similarity between two families of fuzzy sets. Compared with similarity measures based on individual regions and on all regions with crisp feature representations, our approach greatly reduces the influence of inaccurate segmentation. Experimental results based on a database of about 200,000 general-purpose images demonstrate improved accuracy, robustness, and high speed.