UCORM: Indexing Uncorrelated Metric Spaces for Concise Content-Based Retrieval of Medical Images

Abstract

The large amount of medical exams generated by hospitals has a great potential to boost the support for physicians on decision making tasks. This requires efficient and reliable computational systems to retrieve relevant information in real-time. Existing Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) systems rely on Metric Access Methods (MAMs) to speed-up the retrieval task. In this context, images are represented by Feature Extraction Methods (FEMs), according to information such as color or texture. However, MAMs usually index images based on a single FEM. Whenever physicians want to search for similar images using multiple FEMs simultaneously, they need to perform separated queries. In this work, we propose UCORM, an access method capable of indexing images using multiple FEMs by overlapping different metric spaces. UCORM selects the best FEMs to generate a concise yet accurate indexing space. It relies on an interesting use of Pearson correlation, that we named PCMS, to compute the correlation between different FEMs. PCMS allows UCORM to improve the retrieval task by minimizing the overlapping between metric spaces, resulting on fewer intermediary images when performing a query. Experimental analysis shows that UCORM prunes well the data distribution regions with low correlation between FEMs. Also, two medical application scenarios support our claim that UCORM is well-fitted for clinical environments.