초록 ▼

A system and method for searching images includes a low level analyzer for processing image data in a plurality of images into side information files, the image data of each side information file pertaining to a particular statistical or perceptual abstraction of the images, such as motion, color, t

A system and method for searching images includes a low level analyzer for processing image data in a plurality of images into side information files, the image data of each side information file pertaining to a particular statistical or perceptual abstraction of the images, such as motion, color, texture, segments, and the like. A user interface allows a user to graphically construct a search inquiry with icons representing image attributes corresponding to the image data in the side information files. A search inquiry may include complex boolean expressions, and custom image attributes may be created to represent useful search inquiries. The image attributes of a search inquiry may also be ranked. A high level analyzer parses a search inquiry to determine the image attributes contained therein, and analyzes the image data of the side information files to determine a similarity measure for each image with respect to the search inquiry. The high level analyzer orders retrieved images according to their similarity measures, and provides them to a image display controller for display. The user may designate selected images that are acceptable matches for the search inquiry. The high level analyzer will then redetermine the rankings and image attribute values, and either reorder previously retrieved images, or perform a new analysis of the image to retrieve a new set of matching images.

대표청구항 ▼

[ We claim:] [1.] A computer implemented method for retrieving selected images from a plurality of images using a graphically defined inquiry, the method comprising the steps of:analyzing each of the plurality of images to produce image data for each image;receiving at least one input specifying an

[ We claim:] [1.] A computer implemented method for retrieving selected images from a plurality of images using a graphically defined inquiry, the method comprising the steps of:analyzing each of the plurality of images to produce image data for each image;receiving at least one input specifying an inquiry containing at least one image attribute;analyzing the image data for the images by comparing the image attributes to the image data to determine selected images that are substantially similar to the image attributes in the inquiry; andretrieving the selected images from the plurality of images.