Progressive template matching for content-based retrieval in earth-observing satellite image database

In this paper we present a progressive template matching algorithm that can be used when performing content-based retrieval on images or videos that are stored using DCT based block transforms such as those used in the JPEG compression standard. In the proposed method, the template matching is initially performed on a low-resolution version of the image consisting of the low frequency coefficients from the DCT-transformed image. The template is then matched against the neighborhood of the resulting hit(s) by incorporating additional DCT coefficients into the analysis. We have conducted preliminary experiments on a database consisting of large satellite images; our results show that the progressive template matching methodology yields significant computational speedup over the conventional approach.