AURA-tm: The AURA Trade Mark Image Database System
 
The Cybula trade mark system is designed to return the marks
that are considered most similar to the ones stored in the
database.
The solution
 |
The AURA-tm system shown here
is a demonstration front end to the software. The query
image is shown top left and the images recalled that
most closely match this are shown below that. (click on
the image for a larger view).
|
The AURA-tm offer the following unique
attributes:
- Search of trade mark image based on the image
rather than a text description of the image.
- Scalable application, suiting small trade mark
databases (a few thousand) to very large databases
(over 100 thousand).
- Selects images based on the subjective features.
- Presents a ranking of images that can be tuned
for specific needs.
- Uses structural image elements to perform a match.
The Cybula solution is more than just another image database,
it has been designed specifically to fulfil the needs of the trade
mark problem, in particular by taking account of the subjective
nature of the matching problem. The system operates in three stages.
The first stage selects and groups image features, then it submits
these to an AURA based search engine, finally
the results are sorted and scored.
The first stage operates by selecting many simple and complex
image features; these are selected based on how humans may 'see'
features in the image. The system exploits 'gestalt' grouping
principles to decide how features should be combined to be used
in recognition. The result is a graph-based representation of the
image that is then passed to the match engine.
The match engine is designed to match graph based representations.
The system uses a combination of AURA CMM
systems and a novel constraint propagation system. The result is a
highly selective match system that can scale to very large databases,
and still operate on cost effective computing systems.
The final stage extracts the matched marks from the database
and ranks them for presentation to the user.
The software
The Cybula trade mark system exists as a C++ library that can
be imported into any current application. A demonstration system
with a simple MS front end for input and browsing of results is
available for evaluation.
|
HOME 
