11,464 research outputs found
Multi modal multi-semantic image retrieval
PhDThe rapid growth in the volume of visual information, e.g. image, and video can
overwhelm users’ ability to find and access the specific visual information of interest
to them. In recent years, ontology knowledge-based (KB) image information retrieval
techniques have been adopted into in order to attempt to extract knowledge from these
images, enhancing the retrieval performance. A KB framework is presented to
promote semi-automatic annotation and semantic image retrieval using multimodal
cues (visual features and text captions). In addition, a hierarchical structure for the KB
allows metadata to be shared that supports multi-semantics (polysemy) for concepts.
The framework builds up an effective knowledge base pertaining to a domain specific
image collection, e.g. sports, and is able to disambiguate and assign high level
semantics to ‘unannotated’ images.
Local feature analysis of visual content, namely using Scale Invariant Feature
Transform (SIFT) descriptors, have been deployed in the ‘Bag of Visual Words’
model (BVW) as an effective method to represent visual content information and to
enhance its classification and retrieval. Local features are more useful than global
features, e.g. colour, shape or texture, as they are invariant to image scale, orientation
and camera angle. An innovative approach is proposed for the representation,
annotation and retrieval of visual content using a hybrid technique based upon the use
of an unstructured visual word and upon a (structured) hierarchical ontology KB
model. The structural model facilitates the disambiguation of unstructured visual
words and a more effective classification of visual content, compared to a vector
space model, through exploiting local conceptual structures and their relationships.
The key contributions of this framework in using local features for image
representation include: first, a method to generate visual words using the semantic
local adaptive clustering (SLAC) algorithm which takes term weight and spatial
locations of keypoints into account. Consequently, the semantic information is
preserved. Second a technique is used to detect the domain specific ‘non-informative
visual words’ which are ineffective at representing the content of visual data and
degrade its categorisation ability. Third, a method to combine an ontology model with
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a visual word model to resolve synonym (visual heterogeneity) and polysemy
problems, is proposed. The experimental results show that this approach can discover
semantically meaningful visual content descriptions and recognise specific events,
e.g., sports events, depicted in images efficiently.
Since discovering the semantics of an image is an extremely challenging problem, one
promising approach to enhance visual content interpretation is to use any associated
textual information that accompanies an image, as a cue to predict the meaning of an
image, by transforming this textual information into a structured annotation for an
image e.g. using XML, RDF, OWL or MPEG-7. Although, text and image are distinct
types of information representation and modality, there are some strong, invariant,
implicit, connections between images and any accompanying text information.
Semantic analysis of image captions can be used by image retrieval systems to
retrieve selected images more precisely. To do this, a Natural Language Processing
(NLP) is exploited firstly in order to extract concepts from image captions. Next, an
ontology-based knowledge model is deployed in order to resolve natural language
ambiguities. To deal with the accompanying text information, two methods to extract
knowledge from textual information have been proposed. First, metadata can be
extracted automatically from text captions and restructured with respect to a semantic
model. Second, the use of LSI in relation to a domain-specific ontology-based
knowledge model enables the combined framework to tolerate ambiguities and
variations (incompleteness) of metadata. The use of the ontology-based knowledge
model allows the system to find indirectly relevant concepts in image captions and
thus leverage these to represent the semantics of images at a higher level.
Experimental results show that the proposed framework significantly enhances image
retrieval and leads to narrowing of the semantic gap between lower level machinederived
and higher level human-understandable conceptualisation
Knowledge-rich Image Gist Understanding Beyond Literal Meaning
We investigate the problem of understanding the message (gist) conveyed by
images and their captions as found, for instance, on websites or news articles.
To this end, we propose a methodology to capture the meaning of image-caption
pairs on the basis of large amounts of machine-readable knowledge that has
previously been shown to be highly effective for text understanding. Our method
identifies the connotation of objects beyond their denotation: where most
approaches to image understanding focus on the denotation of objects, i.e.,
their literal meaning, our work addresses the identification of connotations,
i.e., iconic meanings of objects, to understand the message of images. We view
image understanding as the task of representing an image-caption pair on the
basis of a wide-coverage vocabulary of concepts such as the one provided by
Wikipedia, and cast gist detection as a concept-ranking problem with
image-caption pairs as queries. To enable a thorough investigation of the
problem of gist understanding, we produce a gold standard of over 300
image-caption pairs and over 8,000 gist annotations covering a wide variety of
topics at different levels of abstraction. We use this dataset to
experimentally benchmark the contribution of signals from heterogeneous
sources, namely image and text. The best result with a Mean Average Precision
(MAP) of 0.69 indicate that by combining both dimensions we are able to better
understand the meaning of our image-caption pairs than when using language or
vision information alone. We test the robustness of our gist detection approach
when receiving automatically generated input, i.e., using automatically
generated image tags or generated captions, and prove the feasibility of an
end-to-end automated process
The relationship between IR and multimedia databases
Modern extensible database systems support multimedia data through ADTs. However, because of the problems with multimedia query formulation, this support is not sufficient.\ud
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Multimedia querying requires an iterative search process involving many different representations of the objects in the database. The support that is needed is very similar to the processes in information retrieval.\ud
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Based on this observation, we develop the miRRor architecture for multimedia query processing. We design a layered framework based on information retrieval techniques, to provide a usable query interface to the multimedia database.\ud
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First, we introduce a concept layer to enable reasoning over low-level concepts in the database.\ud
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Second, we add an evidential reasoning layer as an intermediate between the user and the concept layer.\ud
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Third, we add the functionality to process the users' relevance feedback.\ud
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We then adapt the inference network model from text retrieval to an evidential reasoning model for multimedia query processing.\ud
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We conclude with an outline for implementation of miRRor on top of the Monet extensible database system
Improving Knowledge Retrieval in Digital Libraries Applying Intelligent Techniques
Nowadays an enormous quantity of heterogeneous and distributed information is stored in the digital University. Exploring online collections to find knowledge relevant to a user’s interests is a challenging work. The artificial intelligence and Semantic Web provide a common framework that allows knowledge to
be shared and reused in an efficient way. In this work we propose a comprehensive approach for discovering E-learning objects in large digital collections based on analysis of recorded semantic metadata in those objects and the application of expert system technologies. We have used Case Based-Reasoning
methodology to develop a prototype for supporting efficient retrieval knowledge from online repositories.
We suggest a conceptual architecture for a semantic search engine. OntoUS is a collaborative effort that
proposes a new form of interaction between users and digital libraries, where the latter are adapted to users
and their surroundings
A framework for automatic semantic video annotation
The rapidly increasing quantity of publicly available videos has driven research into developing automatic tools for indexing, rating, searching and retrieval. Textual semantic representations, such as tagging, labelling and annotation, are often important factors in the process of indexing any video, because of their user-friendly way of representing the semantics appropriate for search and retrieval. Ideally, this annotation should be inspired by the human cognitive way of perceiving and of describing videos. The difference between the low-level visual contents and the corresponding human perception is referred to as the ‘semantic gap’. Tackling this gap is even harder in the case of unconstrained videos, mainly due to the lack of any previous information about the analyzed video on the one hand, and the huge amount of generic knowledge required on the other. This paper introduces a framework for the Automatic Semantic Annotation of unconstrained videos. The proposed framework utilizes two non-domain-specific layers: low-level visual similarity matching, and an annotation analysis that employs commonsense knowledgebases. Commonsense ontology is created by incorporating multiple-structured semantic relationships. Experiments and black-box tests are carried out on standard video databases for action recognition and video information retrieval. White-box tests examine the performance of the individual intermediate layers of the framework, and the evaluation of the results and the statistical analysis show that integrating visual similarity matching with commonsense semantic relationships provides an effective approach to automated video annotation
User experiments with the Eurovision cross-language image retrieval system
In this paper we present Eurovision, a text-based system for cross-language (CL) image retrieval.
The system is evaluated by multilingual users for two search tasks with the system configured in
English and five other languages. To our knowledge this is the first published set of user
experiments for CL image retrieval. We show that: (1) it is possible to create a usable multilingual
search engine using little knowledge of any language other than English, (2) categorizing images
assists the user's search, and (3) there are differences in the way users search between the proposed
search tasks. Based on the two search tasks and user feedback, we describe important aspects of
any CL image retrieval system
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