Image Recognition: from Syntax to Semantics

Abstract

n a previous paper the authors presented an analyser of simple architectural images. It works at syntactical level inasmuch as it is able to detect the elementary components of the images and to perform on them some analyses regarding their reciprocal position and their combinations.  Here we present a second step of development of the analyser: the implementation of some semantic capabilities. The most elementary level of semantics is the simple recognition of each object present in the architectural image. Which, in turn means attributing to each object the name of the class of similar objects to which the single object is supposed to pertain. While at the syntactical level the pertinence to a class implies the identity of an object to the class prototype, at the semantic level this is not compulsory. Pertaining to the same class, that is having the same architectural meaning, can be objects having approximately the same shape. Consequently in order to detect the pertinence of an object to a class, that is giving it an architectural meaning, two things are necessary: a date base containing the class prototypes to which the recognized objects are to be assigned and a tool able to “measurei the difference of two shapes