ABSTRACT
Due to advancements in image acquisition technologies and an increase in data storage capacity, the number of large image databases has increased rapidly. It has become necessary to develop techniques that ensure these databases can be managed efficiently. The process of seeking out an image from these image databases is known as Image retrieval. This chapter provides an introduction to image retrieval. Image retrieval techniques of two categories exist i.e. text-based image retrieval and content-based image retrieval. In text-based image retrieval techniques, a user inputs a query to search an image in the form of text, while content-based image retrieval systems take an image or sketch as an input and visually similar images are retrieved from the image database. This chapter discusses both types of image search techniques. The performance of an image retrieval system is tested according to some parameters. An introduction to various similarity measures used in image retrieval and performance evaluation of retrieval techniques is also given in this chapter.
