Semantics-sensitive retrieval for digital picture libraries

We present SIMPLIcity (Semantics-sensitive Integrated Matching for Picture LIbraries), an image database retrieval system, which uses high-level semantics classification and integrated region matching based upon image segmentation. The SIMPLIcity system represents an image by a set of regions, roughly corresponding to objects, which are characterized by color, texture, shape, and location. Based on segmented regions, the system classifies images into categories which are intended to distinguish semantically meaningful differences. These high-level categories, such as textured-nontextured, indoor-outdoor, objectionable-benign, graph-photograph, enhance retrieval by narrowing down the searching range in a database and permitting semantically adaptive searching methods.