Bayesian texture classification and retrieval based on multiscale feature vector

This paper proposes a supervised multiscale Bayesian texture classifier. The classifier exploits the dual-tree complex wavelet transform (DT-CWT) to obtain complex-valued multiscale representations of training texture samples for each texture class. The high-pass subbands of DT-CWT decomposition of a texture image are used to form a multiscale feature vector representing magnitude and phase features. For computational efficiency, the dimensionality of feature vectors is reduced using principal component analysis (PCA). The class conditional probability density function of low-dimensional feature vectors for each texture class is then estimated by using Parzen-window estimate with identical Gaussian kernels and is used to represent the texture class. A query texture image is classified as the corresponding texture class with the highest a posteriori probability according to a Bayesian inferencing. The superior performance and robustness of the proposed classifier is demonstrated for classifying texture images from image databases. The proposed multiscale texture feature vector extracted from both magnitude and phase of DT-CWT subbands of a query image is also shown to be effective for texture retrieval.

Research highlights
► Dual-tree complex wavelet transform (DT-CWT) is shift invariant.
► Use magnitude and phase of DT-CWT subbands for discriminative feature vectors.
► Use Principal Component Analysis to reduce dimensionality of feature vectors.
► Use Parzen-window estimate of class conditional probability density function.
► Use Bayesian inferencing to classify textures.