Distributed image retrieval with colour and keypoint features

Content-based image retrieval poses many problems to computer systems. The content of images has to be described by some feature extraction methods. As image databases are often very large, they are sometimes to complex to be processed by traditional computing methods. We have to use big data solutions to fast retrieve images. The paper presents a system for retrieving images in relational databases in a distributed environment. Content of the query image and images in the database is compared using global colour information and local image keypoints. Image keypoint descriptors are indexed by fuzzy sets directly in a relational database by our algorithm. The process is distributed to several machines thanks to the Apache Hadoop software framework with HDFS.