Content Based Image Retrieval System Using CNN based Deep Learning Models

Digital information search archives on the internet and other platforms have been an essential part of our daily lives. With the use of huge amounts of digital images, it is paramount to develop efficient solutions to retrieve images seamlessly. Due to inadequate textual description, the task of automated image retrieval is quite complicated. Therefore, retrieval of images by analysing their visual content is an exciting task and research-worthy. Text based Image Search (TIBR) is time consuming as initially, every image has to be linked with a keyword or text to be extracted on query search. In the proposed system, an efficient algorithm for Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) using pre-trained CNN-based Deep Learning models to extract deep features of an image has been developed, which significantly increases the performance of the image retrieval process. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) has evolved as an efficient deep learning solution for the CBIR systems that work in image recognition applications. The results of retrieval are evaluated in terms of precision performance parameters. Emphasis has been given to the comparison of the efficiency of the system using two different pre-trained CNN-based Deep Learning models based on VGG16 and ResNet-50 architecture. Transfer learning enables us to develop robust and efficient working systems using pre-trained models. In the proposed system, pre-trained models have been used to derive features using a deep learning CNN network trained for a large image classification dataset ImageNet. This approach outperforms many contemporary CBIR systems. As most CBIR systems depend on query images and as most users of such systems are non-professional, we have developed a user interface for the built prototype systems. The efficiency of the CBIR systems with pre-trained models VGG16, and ResNet-50 are compared for better image retrieval and reliability. The proposed system has addressed a few existing problems in CBIR system design and developed a suitable solution with less semantic gap and better efficiency in image retrieval.