In this paper, a novel region of interest (ROI) query method is proposed for image retrieval by combining a mean shift tracking (MST) algorithm and an improved expectation–maximisation (EM)-like (IEML) method. In the proposed combination, the MST is used to seek the initial location of the target candidate model and then IEML is used to adaptively change the location and scale of the target candidate model to include the relevant region and exclude the irrelevant region as far as possible. In order to improve the performance and effectiveness using IEML to track the target candidate model, a new similarity measure is built based on spatial and colour features and a new image retrieval framework for this new environment is proposed. Extensive experiments confirm that compared with the latest developed approaches, such as the generalized Hough transform (GHT) and EM-like tracking methods, our method can provide a much better performance in effectiveness. On the other hand, for the IEML, the new similarity measure model also substantially decreases computational complexity and improves the precision tracking of the target candidate model. Compared with the conventional ROI-based image retrieval methods, the most significant highlight is that the proposed method can directly find the target candidate model in the candidate image without pre-segmentation in advance. 
ROI image retrieval based on multiple features of mean shift and expectation–maximisation