A scheme for intelligent image retrieval in multimedia databases

Storage and retrieval of visual data play an important role in multimedia systems. We have developed a content-based scheme for retrieving images from multimedia databases intelligently. The retrieval takes two stages. The first stage retrieves an image based on partial information. In the second stage, the system accumulates knowledge from the results of the first-stage retrieval. It analyzes the subspace of features from the resulting images and tries to understand the query request. It also makes full use of the entire index space, although queries can be made on partial information. The technology developed will find many applications in multimedia areas. It will also provide a tool for studying how humans rank the similarity of images and what information people use in visual perception, etc., and will help in the development of methods based on these human approaches. (C) 1996 Academic Press.