Exploratory Image Databases

Exploratory Image Databases gives a comprehensive look at the developing field of image databases. It attempts to delineate the boundaries of the field and to determine the common features and key differences between multimedia databases and the neighboring areas of databases, image analysis, and information retrieval.

The two key concepts that frame image databases are the process of signification in images, and the structural properties of image features as data types. The author presents that signification in images is a different process than in language, and it can be divided into three different modalities. Each one of these modalities gives rise to a different query paradigm and, therefore, to different models of databases. For two of these three modalities exploration (defined as a mix of navigation and query), rather than simple querying, is the correct interaction model between the user and the database.

Image features are data types endowed with rather complex structure. The study of the syntactic structure of features is essential in order to incorporate them into an established database model, and to bridge the gap between the heterogeneous interface and interaction models necessary for images on one side, and the technical requirements of fast and robust access on the other.

Features:

• Comprehensive coverage of the image analysis as well as the database/theoretical aspects of image databases.
• Extensive coverage of interfaces and interaction models, with a theoretical framework for the development of new interaction schemes.
• Identifies three interaction models between users and image databases, two of which have no counterpart in traditional databases.
• Coverage of the relation between image and text, including mixed search models and the automatic determination of the relation between images and text on large corpuses like the web.
• Analysis of the process of signification in images and its influence on the interaction models and technological problems of image databases.

• Preface
• Acknowledgments

• An Eenrie sense of déjà vu
• Th mysterious case of the disappearing semantics
• How you can know you are right

• Similitary
• Systems with limited ontologies
• Systems with general ontilogies
• Writing about images

• Algebra and the modern query
• Where is my image ?
• Of mice and men
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index