Abstract
Search engines are useful because they allow the user to find information of interest from the World Wide Web. However, most of the popular search engines today are textual; they do not allow the user to find images from the Web. This paper describes AMORE, a Web search engine that allows the user to retrieve images from the Web by specifying relevant keywords or a similar image. Text and image search can also be combined. Moreover, we have developed a Query Result Visualization Environment that allows the organization of the results if many images are retrieved. In this paper we present AMORE's user interface and explain the technique for retrieving images visually similar to a user specified image. The method of automatically assigning relevant keywords to the images is then explained. Finally, the architecture of the system as well as some interesting observations of our experiences with AMORE are discussed.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aslandogan, Y., C. Thier, C. Yu, J. Zou, and N. Rishe (1997), “Using Semantic Contents and WordNet in Image Retrieval,” In Proceedings of the ACM SIGIR '97 Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, Philadelphia, PA, pp. 286–295.
Bach, J.R., C. Fuller, A. Gupta, A. Hampapur, B. Horowitz, R. Jain, and C. Shu (1996), “The Virage Image Search Engine: An Open Framework for Image Management,” In Proceedings of the SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering: Storage and Retrieval for Still Image and Video Databases IV, San Jose, CA.
Baldonado, M. and T. Winograd (1997), “SenseMaker: An Information-Exploration Interface Supporting the Contextual Evolution of a User's Interest,” In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI '97 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Atlanta, GA, pp. 11–18.
Bimbo, A. and P. Pala (1997), “Shape Indexing by Structural Properties,” In International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems, Ottawa, Canada, pp. 370–378.
Bowman, C., P. Danzig, D. Hardy, U. Manber, and M. Schwartz (1994), “The Harvest Information Discovery and Access System,” In Proceedings of the Second International World Wide Web Conference, Chicago, IL.
Chang, S., J. Smith, M. Beigi, and A. Benitez (1997), “Visual Information Retrieval From Large Distributed Online Repositories,” Communications of the ACM 40, 12, 63–71.
Cutting, D., D. Karger, J. Pedersen, and J. Tukey (1992), “Scatter/Gather: A Cluster-Based Approach to Browsing Large Document Clusters,” In Proceedings of the ACM SIGIR '92 Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, Copenhagen, Denmark, pp. 318–329.
Flickner, M., H. Sawhney, W. Niblack, J. Ashley, Q. Huang, B. Dom, M. Gorkani, J. Hafner, D. Lee, D. Petkovic, D. Steele, and P. Yanker (1995), “Query by Image and Video Content: The QBIC System,” IEEE Computer 28, 9, 23–48.
Frankel, C., M. Swain, and V. Athitsos (1996), “WebSeer: An Image Search Engine for the World Wide Web,” Technical Report 96-14, University of Chicago, Computer Science Department.
Harmandas, V., M. Sanderson, and M. Dunlop (1997), “Image Retrieval by Hypertext Links,” In Proceedings of the ACM SIGIR '97 Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, Philadelphia, PA, pp. 296–303.
Hearst, M. and K. Chandu (1997), “Cat-a-Cone: An Interactive Interface for Specifying Searches and Viewing Retrieval Results using a Large Category Hierarchy,” In Proceedings of the ACM SIGIR '97 Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, Philadelphia, PA, pp. 246–255.
Hirata, K. and Y. Hara (1994), “The Concept of Media-Based Navigation and Its Implementation on Hypermedia System ‘Miyabi',” NEC Research and Development 35, 4, 410–420.
Manber, U. and S. Wu (1993), “Glimpse: A Tool to Search Through Entire File Systems,” Technical Report 93-34, University of Arizona, Computer Science Department.
Mehrotra, R. and J. Gray (1995), “Similar-Shape Retrieval in Shape Data Management,” IEEE Computer, 57–62.
Miller, G. (1995), “WordNet: A Lexical Database for English,” Communications of the ACM 38, 11, 39–41.
Pinkerton, B. (1994), “Finding what People Want: Experiences with the WebCrawler,” In Proceedings of the First International World Wide Web Conference, Geneva, Switzerland.
Pirolli, P., J. Pitkow, and R. Rao (1996), “Silk from a Sow's Ear: Extracting Usable Structures from the Web,” In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI '96 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Vancouver, Canada, pp. 118–125.
Pitkow, J. and P. Pirolli (1997), “Life, Death and Lawfulness on the Electronic Frontier,” In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI '97 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Atlanta, GA, pp. 383–390.
Rowe, N. (1996), "Using Local Optimality Criteria for Efficient Information Retrieval with Redundant Information Filters, ACM Transactions on Information Systems 14, 2, 138–174.
Rowe, N. and B. Frew (1998), “Automatic Caption Localization for Photographs on World Wide Web Pages,” Information Processing and Management 34, 1, 95–107.
Salton, G. and M. McGill (1983), Introduction to Modern Information Retrieval, McGraw-Hill.
Srihari, R. (1995), Automatic Indexing and Content-Based Retrieval of Captioned Images," IEEE Computer 28,9, 49–56.
Van-Rijsbergen, C. (1979), Information Retrieval, Butterworths.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mukherjea, S., Hirata, K. & Hara, Y. AMORE: A World Wide Web image retrieval engine. World Wide Web 2, 115–132 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1019248722478
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1019248722478