A unified inverted index for an efficient image and text retrieval

ABSTRACT

We present an efficient method for approximate search in a combination of several metric spaces -- which are a generalization of low level image features -- using an inverted index. Our approximation gives very high recall with subsecond response time on a real data set of one million images extracted from Flickr.

We further exploit the inverted index to improve efficiency of the query processing by combining our search in metric features with search in associated textual metadata.

REFERENCES

• 1: Pavel Zezula , Giuseppe Amato , Vlastislav Dohnal , Michal Batko, Similarity Search: The Metric Space Approach (Advances in Database Systems), Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., Secaucus, NJ, 2005
• 2: Vlastislav Dohnal , Claudio Gennaro , Pasquale Savino , Pavel Zezula, D-Index: Distance Searching Index for Metric Data Sets, Multimedia Tools and Applications, v.21 n.1, p.9-33, September 2003 [doi>10.1023/A:1025026030880]
• 3: Hanan Samet, Foundations of Multidimensional and Metric Data Structures (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics and Geometric Modeling), Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, 2005

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.3 Information Search and Retrieval
          Subjects: Retrieval models

General Terms:
Algorithms, Experimentation

Keywords:
IR, approximation, inverted index, metric spaces, multimedia