With the advances in digital imaging and storage technologies, image is becoming a common type of data in many applications. This creates a demand to manage these database of images. One of the issues is in providing a query interface to allow an effective and efficient retrieval. Our study in this issue has led to the development of a query interface system which we call Exquisi. The main contribution of Exquisi is an expressive query language and interface that allow effective querying from a database of similar images. In particular, it provides querying tools for a user to express subtle differences that may exist between images to be retrieved and other images that are similar. The query interface also allows the user to incorporate ambiguities and imprecisions in specifying his/her query. Another important aspect of Exquisi is the provision of a reformulation language by which the user can incorporate a more specific aspect of the query results for the refinement of the query. One key part of this paper is the description of the input and reformulation features that are supported by Exquisi and a discussion on the relationship between the reformulation and the input modules.

Date Published: 13 March 1996
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 2670, Storage and Retrieval for Still Image and Video Databases IV, (13 March 1996); doi: 10.1117/12.234798

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2670:
Storage and Retrieval for Still Image and Video Databases IV
Ishwar K. Sethi; Ramesh C. Jain, Editor(s)