Re-ranking item recommendations based on image feature data

• US 10,185,899 B2
• Filed: 11/09/2015
• Issued: 01/22/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: eBay Inc.
• Original Assignee: eBay Inc.
• Inventors: Bhardwaj, Anurag, Piramuthu, Robinson, Sundaresan, Neelakantan
• Primary Examiner(s): Dang, Duy M
• Application Number:
  US14/936,052
• Publication Number:
  US 20160063603A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,170 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24578 using ranking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/532 Query formulation, e.g. graphical querying
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/583 using metadata automatically derived from the content
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/5838 using colour
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/5866 using information manually generated, e.g. tags, keywords, comments, manually generated location and time information
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 18/21 Design or setup of recognition systems or techniques; Extraction of features in feature space; Blind source separation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 18/22 Matching criteria, e.g. proximity measures
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0629 for generating comparisons
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0631 Item recommendations
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0643 Graphical representation of items or shoppers
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/10024 Color image
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/13 Edge detection
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/41 based on statistical description of texture
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/90 Determination of colour characteristics
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/50 by performing operations within image blocks; by using histograms, e.g. histogram of oriented gradients [HoG]; by summing image-intensity values; Projection analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/507 Summing image-intensity values; Histogram projection analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/56 relating to colour

Abstract

An apparatus and method to adjust item recommendations are disclosed herein. A first image attribute of a query image is compared to a second image attribute of each of a plurality of inventory images of a plurality of inventory items to identify the inventory items similar to the query image. Item recommendations comprising the identified inventory items in a first listing order are provided for display at a remote device. A second listing order of the identified inventory items is determined based on a user preference for a particular one of the identified inventory items. At least the second listing order is provided to the remote device for re-display of the item recommendations in accordance with the second listing order.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a processor, and a memory including instructions that, when executed by the processor, causes the processor to perform operations comprising;

receiving a query image at a user interface;

performing image processing to extract an image attribute of the query image;

causing the display of user interface elements on the user interface, each user interface element being associated to a recommendation of an item, the recommendations of items being ranked according to a rank order based on degrees of similarity between the extracted image attribute of the query image and each image attribute of each item image among a set of item images;

re-ranking the recommendations in response to detecting a selection of a user interface element from among the displayed user interface elements; and

causing the display of the re-ranked recommendations on the user interface.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein:

the degrees of similarity are based on a comparison of the image attribute of the query image to each of the image attribute of each of item image among the set of item images.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the operations further comprise:

identifying items each respectively depicted in each of the item image among a set of item images based on the comparison of the image attribute.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise:

receiving the query image within a query submitted from a device.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise:

receiving a photograph as the query image from a device, the received photograph depicts at least one of a color, a pattern, a textile, an article of clothing, or a portion of the article of clothing.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise:

detecting the selection of the recommendation from among the recommendations presented according to the rank order.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein:

the detecting of the selection includes detecting a user preference for the recommendation among the presented recommendations.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein:

the re-ranking of the recommendations includes identifying a color shared in common between the query image and the selected recommendation among the recommendations presented according to the rank order.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein:

the re-ranking of the recommendations includes identifying a pattern shared in common between the query image and the selected recommendation among the recommendations presented according to the rank order.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein:

the re-ranking of the recommendations includes elevating a rank of a test recommendation among the recommendations based on its corresponding item image being less similar to the query image than at least one further recommendation among the recommendations.

11. A method comprising:

receiving a query image at a user interface;

performing image processing to extract an image attribute of the query image;

causing the display of user interface elements on the user interface, each user interface element being associated to a recommendation of an item, the recommendations of items being ranked according to a rank order based on degrees of similarity between the extracted image attribute of the query image and each image attribute of each item image among a set of item images;

re-ranking the recommendations in response to detecting a selection of a user interface element from among the displayed user interface elements; and

causing the display of the re-ranked recommendations on the user interface.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein:

the degrees of similarity are based on a comparison of the image attribute of the query image to each of the image attribute of each of item image among the set of item images.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

identifying items each respectively depicted in each of the item image among a set of item images based on the comparison of the image attribute.

14. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

detecting the selection of the recommendation from among the recommendations presented according to the rank order, the detecting of the selection includes detecting a user preference for the recommendation among the presented recommendations.

15. The method of claim 11, wherein:

the re-ranking of the recommendations includes identifying a color shared in common between the query image and the selected recommendation among the recommendations presented according to the rank order.

16. The method of claim 11, wherein:

the re-ranking of the recommendations includes identifying a pattern shared in common between the query image and the selected recommendation among the recommendations presented according to the rank order.

17. The method of claim 11, wherein:

the re-ranking of the recommendations includes elevating a rank of a test recommendation among the recommendations based on its corresponding item image being less similar to the query image than at least one further recommendation among the recommendations.

18. A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium comprising instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of a machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:

receiving a query image at a user interface;

performing image processing to extract an image attribute of the query image;

causing the display of user interface elements on the user interface, each user interface element being associated to a recommendation of an item, the recommendations of items being ranked according to a rank order based on degrees of similarity between the extracted image attributes of the query image and each image attribute of each item image among a set of item images;

re-ranking the recommendations in response to detecting a selection of a user interface element from among the displayed user interface elements; and

causing the display of the re-ranked recommendations on the user interface.

19. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 18, wherein:

the degrees of similarity is based on a comparison of the image attribute of the query image to each of the image attribute of each of item image among the set of item images.

20. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 18, wherein the operations further comprise:

the re-ranking of the recommendations includes identifying a color shared in common between the query image and the selected recommendation among the recommendations presented according to the rank order.