AETOS:

Overview

This system demonstrates a novel interation technique to support content-based image search in large image collections. Each image is represented by a vertex in a directed graph. An arc is established between two images if there are one or more features for which the images are nearest neighbours. The arcs are weigted by the proportion of the features for which the nearest neighbour relationship holds. The resultant network exposes the sematic richness of the image collection and allows the user to browse through this.

Quick start

Click on the link below which will open the application in a new window. The application should open with the Corel image collection loaded and the NNK browser pane displaying a slelection of images. In each pane you can do the following:

NNK Browser --- Click on an image and the display will move to show the network around that image. The start image will be in the centre with its neighbours in the network arranged around it. Closer images are more strongly connected. You can continue to click on further images to continue to browse the nework. As you "mouse over" an image the image will expand to show itself and the images either side of it in the collection. For a video collection this will show the time series of key frames. You can browse this dimension using the << or >> buttons. To select an image for query click on the Q in its expanded view.

Following a query (see below) the NNK browser pane will show the results in a ranked arrangement. This can be browsed as before.

Query --- To select an image for query click on the Q in its expanded view. The image will appear in the query pane to the left. Mutliple images can be added to the query pane. They can be removed by clicking on them. You can also add text to the query by entering it into the box at the top of the page. Once a query has been entered click the Retrieve button to execute the query. The display will vary depending on the pane that is active.

Simple search --- This shows the network around the query. For a single image query, that image will be at the centre.

NNK Search --- This pane displays the network around the query. The size of the images depends on the number of features for which that image is the nearest neighbour to the query. Right clicking on an image allows you to select one or multiple images and then re-perform the search.

Application

This link -- AETOS -- will open the application in a new browser. It may take a little while to open depending on the speed of your Internet connection.

Papers

D Heesch and S Rüger: Three interfaces for content-based access to image collections. Int'l Conf on Image and Video Retrieval (CIVR, Dublin, Ireland), Springer LNCS 3115, pp 491–499, Jul 2004

D Heesch and S Rüger: NN^k networks for content-based image retrieval. European Conf on Information Retrieval (ECIR, Sunderland, UK), Springer LNCS 2997, pp 253–266, Apr 2004