A Content-Based Remote Sensing Image Change Information Retrieval Model

With the rapid development of satellite remote sensing technology, the size of image datasets in many application areas is growing exponentially and the demand for Land-Cover and Land-Use change remote sensing data is growing rapidly. It is thus becoming hard to efficiently and intelligently retrieve the change information that users need from massive image databases. In this paper, content-based image retrieval is successfully applied to change detection, and a content-based remote sensing image change information retrieval model is introduced. First, the construction of a new model framework for change information retrieval from a remote sensing database is described. Then, as the target content cannot be expressed by one kind of feature alone, a multiple-feature, integrated retrieval model is proposed. Thirdly, an experimental prototype system that was set up to demonstrate the validity and practicability of the model is described. The proposed model is a new method of acquiring change detection information from remote sensing imagery and so can reduce the need for image pre-processing and also deal with problems related to seasonal changes, as well as other problems encountered in the field of change detection. Meanwhile, the new model has important implications for improving remote sensing image management and autonomous information retrieval. The experiment results obtained using a Landsat data set show that the use of the new model can produce promising results. A coverage rate and mean average precision of 71% and 89%, respectively, were achieved for the top 20 returned pairs of images.