Content-based image retrieval using H.264 intra coding features

•This paper focuses on content-based image retrieval in the H.264 compression domain.•Intra prediction mode and residual coefficient are extracted as the texture feature to match images.•The proposed method substantially reduce computational and memory consumption, compared with the pixel domain approach.

Efficient multimedia retrieval has become a vital issue because more audio and video data are now available. This paper focuses on content-based image retrieval (CBIR) in the compression domain (CPD). The retrieval features are extracted based on I-frame coding information in H.264. This paper proposes using a local mode histogram as the texture feature to match images and applying the residual coefficients to filter non-confident modes. The geometrical correspondence between two images is also considered. The experimental results show that the proposed method can substantially reduce computational and memory resource consumption, and provides similar performance compared with methods that extract features from decompressed images.