Searching for image information content, its discovery, extraction, and representation

Abstract

Image information content is known to be a complicated and controvercial problem. This paper posits a new image information content definition. Following the theory of Solomonoff-Kolmogorov-Chaitin's complexity, we define image information content as a set of descriptions of imafe data structures. Three levels of such description can be generally distinguished: 1)the global level, where the coarse structure of the entire scene is initially outlined; 2) the intermediate level, where structures of separate, non-overlapping image regions usually associated with individual scene objects are deliniated; and 3) the low-level description, where local image structures observed in a limited and restricted field of view are resolved. A technique for creating such image information content descriptors is developed. Its algorithm is presented and elucidated with some examples, which demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.