We present an approach to utilize large amounts of web data for learning CNNs. Specifically inspired by curriculum learning, we present a two-step approach for CNN training. First, we use easy images to train an initial visual representation. We then use this initial CNN and adapt it to harder, more realistic images by leveraging the structure of data and categories. We demonstrate that our two-stage CNN outperforms a fine-tuned CNN trained on ImageNet on Pascal VOC 2012. We also demonstrate the strength of webly supervised learning by localizing objects in web images and training a R-CNN style detector. It achieves the best performance on VOC 2007 where no VOC training data is used. Finally, we show our approach is quite robust to noise and performs comparably even when we use image search results from March 2013 (pre-CNN image search era).
@cite_41: We describe an approach to object and scene retrieval which searches for and localizes all the occurrences of a user outlined object in a video. The object is represented by a set of viewpoint invariant region descriptors so that recognition can proceed successfully despite changes in viewpoint, illumination and partial occlusion. The temporal continuity of the video within a shot is used to track the regions in order to reject unstable regions and reduce the effects of noise in the descriptors. The analogy with text retrieval is in the implementation where matches on descriptors are pre-computed (using vector quantization), and inverted file systems and document rankings are used. The result is that retrieved is immediate, returning a ranked list of key frames shots in the manner of Google. The method is illustrated for matching in two full length feature films.
@cite_19: We present a fully automatic approach to construct a large-scale, high-precision dataset from noisy web images. Within the entire pipeline, we focus on generating high quality seed images for subsequent dataset growing. High quality seeds are essential as we revealed, but they have received relatively less attention in previous works with respect to how to automatically generate them. In this work, we propose a density score based on rank-order distance to identify positive seed images. The basic idea is images relevant to a concept typically are tightly clustered, while the outliers are widely scattered. Through adaptive thresholding, we guarantee the selected seeds as numerous and accurate as possible. Starting with the high quality seeds, we grow a high quality dataset by dividing seeds and conducting iterative negative and positive mining. Our system can automatically collect thousands of images for one concept class, with a precision rate of 95 or more. Comparisons with recent state-of-the-arts also demonstrate our method’s superior performance.
@cite_59: Presents a review of 200 references in content-based image retrieval. The paper starts with discussing the working conditions of content-based retrieval: patterns of use, types of pictures, the role of semantics, and the sensory gap. Subsequent sections discuss computational steps for image retrieval systems. Step one of the review is image processing for retrieval sorted by color, texture, and local geometry. Features for retrieval are discussed next, sorted by: accumulative and global features, salient points, object and shape features, signs, and structural combinations thereof. Similarity of pictures and objects in pictures is reviewed for each of the feature types, in close connection to the types and means of feedback the user of the systems is capable of giving by interaction. We briefly discuss aspects of system engineering: databases, system architecture, and evaluation. In the concluding section, we present our view on: the driving force of the field, the heritage from computer vision, the influence on computer vision, the role of similarity and of interaction, the need for databases, the problem of evaluation, and the role of the semantic gap.
: Image retrieval @cite_59 @cite_41 is a classical problem in this setting. It is not only an active research topic, but also fascinating to commercial image search engines and photo-sharing websites since they would like to better capture data streams on the Internet and thus better serve user's information need. Over the years, various techniques ( click-through data) have been integrated to improve search engine results. Note that, using pretrained models ( CNN @cite_19 ) to clean up web data also falls into this category, since extensive human supervision has already been used.