A qualitative examination of content-based image retrieval behavior using systematically modified test images

We describe the outcome of an effort to understand the behavior of content-based image retrieval (CBIR) technology by examining the behavior of a CBIR system in response to carefully constructed input query images. This work is preliminary and only considers a single CBIR system, SIMPLIcity (J. Z. Wang et al. Proc. of First ACM/IEEE Joint Conf. on Digital Libraries, pp. 268-277, 2001). We chose this particular system for expediency. It is our intention to develop a methodology suitable for examining any CBIR system.