Emerging Applications of Image Retrieval and Recognition Technology in Smart Cities

Dear Colleagues,

The emerging applications of image retrieval and recognition technology (IRRT) in smart cities include smart healthcare, smart energy, smart transportation, smart environment, smart safety and smart education. In smart healthcare, IRRT could help to identify a given case based on similar past cases found in the image archive. In smart transportation, IRRT could help to recognize traffic patterns by investigating image sequences acquired in real time. In a smart environment, IRRT could help to predict weather information and hazardous conditions. In smart safety, IRRT could help to predict natural disasters. In smart education, IRRT could help to make new discoveries using high-quality digital images taken from different research fields.

However, there are still challenges that need to be addressed to accelerate the development of these emerging applications. Firstly, the current techniques for feature extraction cannot adequately represent an image. More effective and robust feature-extraction methods are urgently required. Secondly, the image datasets are not large enough to meet the practical needs of the emerging applications in smart cities. Thirdly, current image retrieval and recognition technology cannot satisfy real-time requirements when the image datasets are large enough to meet the practical needs.

This Special Issue will focus on (but will not be limited to) the following topics:

• Image datasets for the emerging applications in smart cities;
• Effective features for image retrieval and recognition;
• Content-based image retrieval methods;
• Object recognition methods;
• Image-sensing devices and methods;
• Challenges of IRRT in smart cities;
• More emerging applications of IRRT in smart cities;
• Image-processing techniques that have the potential to be used in IRRT.

Technical Committee Member:
Dr. Lina Liu  Shandong University of Technology

Prof. Dr. Zhenzhou Wang
Prof. Dr. Xiaomin Yang
Dr. Mingliang Gao
Dr. Gwanggil Jeon
Guest Editor

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