Patent ID: 8611617

Claim:
A method comprising: generating, by a device comprising a processor, a set of image classifiers that classify images according to characteristics of the images, wherein the generating comprises: establishing a set of training images comprising images from one or more image classes; assigning an image class index of one or more image class indexes to an image class of the one or more image classes; and iteratively generating the set of image classifiers, wherein the set of image classifiers classify a training image of the set of training images with the image class index, and wherein the image class corresponds to the training image; classifying a set of candidate images using the set of image classifiers to generate fingerprints for the set of candidate images, wherein a fingerprint comprises a plurality of segments; representing the plurality of segments of the fingerprints for the set of candidate images using a plurality of hash tables; classifying a target image using the set of image classifiers to generate a fingerprint of the target image; comparing a plurality of segments of the fingerprint of the target image with the plurality of segments of the fingerprints for the set of candidate images using the plurality of hash tables; and selecting a candidate image having a defined level of similarity with the target image based on the comparing.