Score Image Retrieval to Inaccurate OMR performance

This paper presents an algorithm for effective retrieval of score information to an input score image. The originality of the proposed algorithm is that it is designed to be robust to recognition errors by an OMR (Optical Music Recognition), while existing methods such as pitch histogram requires error induced OMR result be corrected before retrieval process. This approach helps people to retrieve score without training on music score for error correction. OMR takes a score image as input, recognizes musical symbols, and produces structural symbolic notation of the score as output, for example, in MusicXML format. Among the musical symbols on a score, it is observed that filled noteheads are rarely detected with errors with its simple black filled round shape for OMR processing. Barlines that separate measures also strong to OMR errors with its long uniform length vertical line characteristic. The proposed algorithm consists of a descriptor for a score and a similarity measure between a query score and a reference score. The descriptor is based on note-count, the number of filled noteheads in a measure. Each part of a score is represented by a sequence of note-count numbers. The descriptor is an n-gram sequence of the note-count sequence. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm works successfully to a certain degree in score image-based retrieval for an erroneous OMR output.