Image Search Engine

Synonyms

Web Image search engine

Definition

Image search engines are Web-based services that collect and index images available on the Internet.

Abstract

Some commercial image search engines have indexed over one billion images so far. Like general web search, image searching is mostly based on text information associated with images, which can be automatically extracted from containing web pages. In addition to text-based image search engines, there are also some content-based image retrieval systems that index images using their visual characteristics. Those systems are mainly developed for research purpose and usually limited to small image collections.

Introduction

Due to improved digital imaging technologies and convenient accessibility facilitated by the Internet, the popularity of digital images is rapidly increasing. As most of those images are not annotated with semantic descriptors, it might be a challenge for general users to find specific images from the Internet.

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