Distributed MPEG-7 image indexing using small world user agents

An open peer-to-peer architecture for performing distributed image indexing and retrieval is proposed. The system employs a sociological model of human acquaintance networks (small world theory) and concepts derived from the nature of the World Wide Web. Retrieval is performed using agents, and a node hopping algorithm is employed that exploits node referrals established from descriptor data stored locally by each node. A general framework for this small world image miner (SWIM) is presented along with a realization using MPEG-7 color structure descriptor data for 2400 images. Results related to search agent path length and network node degree are presented.