21st Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on
Research and Development in Information Retrieval
Melbourne, Australia
August 24 - 28, 1998
TUTORIAL T6
Content Based Image Retrieval
Presenters
R. Manmatha and
S. Chandu Ravela,
University of Massachusetts.
Time
Monday 24 August, 2:00pm--5:30pm.
Location
Melbourne Town Hall, Swanston Street, Melbourne.
Description
Managing information in today's world requires tools which search,
retrieve, classify and categorize this information. While there are
successful search engines which search and retrieve information in the
form of ASCII text (eg INQUERY, AltaVista), there are few successful
tools for managing images.
Users desire semantic similarity from a retrieval engine. However, this
is difficult to achieve for images since the technology to recognize
objects in general does not exist. However, similarity based on
attributes like color, texture, shape and appearance may often
approximate semantic similarity. Many image retrieval systems are based
on using these attributes.
In this tutorial, we discuss why the problems underlying the field of
image retrieval are difficult, the current state of the technology and
directions in which the technology is likely to be improved.
Completely automatic systems are difficult to build with the current
state of technology. By involving the user in the loop, by carefully
formulating the problem and by careful specification of the query, good
results may be achieved. The tutorial will discuss these aspects and
the different current technologies that may be applied for retrieving
images. We will also discuss how such systems may be evaluated.
Audience
This tutorial is geared towards researchers, developers and engineers
with an interest in multimedia information management. It does not
assume a specific background but some mathematical maturity will be of
significant advantage. The aim of the tutorial is to introduce people
to the issues, the state of technology and possible future directions
in the field of image retrieval. At the end of the course, people
should be able to appreciate some of the common techniques used in the
area of image retrieval and also be able to apply some of the simpler
techniques.
Biography of presenters
Dr. R. Manmatha is a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for
Intelligent Information Retrieval at the University of Massachusetts at
Amherst. He is currently the lead researcher for the multimedia
indexing and retrieval group at the Center. Manmatha's current research
is in the areas of image and video retrieval, document recognition and
analysis and computer vision. He has worked on image retrieval, finding
text in images and in methods to retrieve handwritten manscripts and
has more than 20 papers in these areas. He is involved in a project
from the US Patent and Trademark Office to index and retrieve
trademarks using both content based retrieval and text. Dr. Manmatha is
Co-Principal Investigator of an NSF grant on multi-modal retrieval and
a member of the program committee of the IEEE Workshop on Applications
of Computer Vision (WACV'98). He has consulted with several companies
on imaging products.
S. Chandu Ravela is a doctoral candidate at the University of
Massachusetts. He is a researcher at the multimedia indexing and
retrieval group and the computer vision lab. and works on image
retrieval. In addition his interests are in multimedia content
management, image matching, and computer vision. Mr. Ravela has
written a number of papers in the area of image retrieval. In the area
of image retrieval, he is leading research on a project from the
US Patent and Trademark Office to index and retrieve trademarks using
both content based retrieval and text. Mr. Ravela has consulted with
industry on imaging products. He received a MS in computer science from
the University of Massachusetts in 1994 and a BE in Computer
Engineering and Science from the Regional Engg College, Trichy, India
in 1991.
Further Information
Copies of slides provided by the instructors, copies of some papers
and an annotated bibliography will be made available to the
participants.
The tutorial is divided into the following sections.
| Image Retrieval |
The notion of visual similarity and difficulties therein.
Content based
similarity using color, texture, shape and appearance |
| Applications |
Trademark retrieval, face recognition, and organizing image
collections |
| Issues |
Part vs. whole image querying, query specification |
Representations and
Techniques |
Filtering, Color spaces, histograms, principal component
analysis,
correlation and combining multiple features |
| Systems |
Examples of systems in development |
Cost
The charge for registration is $A150 per tutorial.
Registrants will receive a copy of the
notes for the tutorial, and morning/afternoon tea.
All tutorials are offered on an only-if-demand-warrants
basis;
and full refunds will be given for tutorials
that are cancelled because of low enrolments.
Tutorial notes will also be available for sale on an individual
basis at the conference registration desk.
sigir98@cs.mu.oz.au,
10 April 1998.