A Benchmark for Image Retrieval using Distributed Systems over the Internet: BIRDS-I

The performance of CBIR algorithms is usually measured on an isolated workstation. In a real-world environment the algorithms would only constitute a minor component among the many interacting components. The Internet dramati-cally changes many of the usual assumptions about measuring CBIR performance. Any CBIR benchmark should be designed from a networked systems standpoint. These benchmarks typically introduce communication overhead because the real systems they model are distributed applications. We present our implementation of a client/server benchmark called BIRDS-I to measure image retrieval performance over the Internet. It has been designed with the trend toward the use of small personalized wireless systems in mind. Web-based CBIR implies the use of heteroge-neous image sets, imposing certain constraints on how the images are organized and the type of performance metrics applicable. BIRDS-I only requires controlled human intervention for the compilation of the image collection and none for the generation of ground truth in the measurement of retrieval accuracy. Benchmark image collections need to be evolved incrementally toward the storage of millions of images and that scaleup can only be achieved through the use of computer-aided compilation. Finally, our scoring metric introduces a tightly optimized image-ranking window.Comment: 24 pages, To appear in the Proc. SPIE Internet Imaging Conference 200

Knowledge lattice approach for web courseware authoring

In this paper, we present the application of knowledge lattice approach in a Web-based courseware authoringsupport system.Knowledge lattice is widely known as ontology in Semantic Web environment.Onlotogy is a formal and declarative representation for knowledge. Knowledge is represented in the form of chunks in several layers. This approach is being used to develop Instructional Management Support System (IMSS).IMSS aims to support students, teachers, courseware developers, administrators, and parents. For example, it supports teachers by managing tasks such as monitoring progress and presenting subject content in a Web-based learning environment. Knowledge lattice is applied as the main interface to navigate the system modules. The lattice is used to represent the subject domain by linking the basic knowledge chunks to more advanced knowledge chunks.To further explain this approach, we define a set of functions related to each knowledge chunks