Press Association Images — Image Retrieval Challenges

Abstract

In order to maximise the potential benefits of large repositories of digital images available both publicly and in private collections, intelligent information retrieval systems are required. Unfortunately, most image search engines rely on free–text search that often returns non–relevant results based on the occurrence of search keywords in text accompanying the images being matched purely at a lexical, rather than a semantic, level. In this chapter we report on ongoing work at Press Association Images on building a semantically–enabled image annotation and retrieval engine that relies on methodically structured ontologies for image annotation, thus allowing for more intelligent reasoning about the image content and subsequently improving the end–user browsing experience.