Extending image retrieval with group-oriented interface

ImageGrouper is a new user interface for digital image search and organization. It is group-oriented in that image search, annotation and organizing are done by grouping images on the workspace. This enables faster and flexible text annotation on a large number of images as well as effective image organization. In addition, this interface improves and extends content-based image retrieval (CBIR) as well. First, finding good combinations of query examples is essential for successful retrieval. The query-by-groups concept allows the user to try different combinations of query examples quickly and easily. Second, because of semantic gap between the user´s concept and extracted visual features, it may be difficult to represent the user´s request by only one class of query examples. We propose a new feature-weighting scheme where the user´s request can be expressed in multiple positive classes.