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

Image information content is known to be a complicated and a controversial problem. We posit 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 image 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, nonoverlapping image regions usually associated with individual scene objects are delineated; 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. 2005 SPIE and IS&T.