Detection of near-duplicate images for web search

Among the vast numbers of images on the web are many duplicates and near-duplicates, that is, variants derived from the same original image. Such near-duplicates appear in many web image searches and may represent infringements of copyright or indicate the presence of redundancy. While methods for identifying near-duplicates have been investigated, there has been no analysis of the kinds of alterations that are common on the web or evaluation of whether real cases of near-duplication can in fact be identified. In this paper we use popular queries and a commercial image search service to collect images that we then manually analyse for instances of near-duplication. We show that such duplication is indeed significant, but that not all kinds of image alteration explored in previous literature are evident in web data. Removal of near-duplicates from a collection is impractical, but we propose that they be removed from sets of answers. We evaluate our technique for automatic identifica...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: CIVR
• Authors: Jun Jie Foo, Justin Zobel, Ranjan Sinha, Seyed M. M. Tahaghoghi
• Keywords: CIVR 2007, Commercial Image Search, Image, Web Image Searches