A Multi-Stage Framework for Classification of Unconstrained Image Data from Mobile Phones

During the past decade, the number of mobile electronic devices equipped with cameras has increased dramatically and so has the number of real-world applications for image classification. In many of these applications, the image data is captured in an uncontrolled manner and in complex environments and conditions under which existing image classification techniques may not perform well. In this paper, the authors provide a detailed description of an efficient multi-stage image classification framework that is robust enough to remain effective also under challenging imaging conditions, and demonstrate its effectiveness in the context of classification of real-world images of dumpsters captured by mobile phones in the metropolitan city of Hyderabad. Their system is able to achieve accurate classification of the cleanliness state of the dumpsters by utilizing a multi-stage approach, where the first stage is the efficient detection of the dumpster and the second stage is the classification of its state. The authors provide a detailed analysis of the performance of the system as well as comprehensive experimental results on real-world image data.