Spatial match representation scheme for indexing and querying in iconic image databases

In multimedia information retrieval applications, content-based image retrieval is essential for retrieving relevant multimedia documents. The purpose of our paper is to provide both effective representation and efficient retrieval of images when a pixel-level original image is automatically or manually transformed into its iconic image containing meaningful graphic descriptions, called icon objects. For this, we propose a new spatial match representation scheme to describe spatial relationships between icon objects precisely by using accurate positional operators as well as by expressing objects as rectangles, rather than pointer. In order to accelerate image searching, we also design an efficient retrieval method using a signature file technique. Finally, we show from our experiments that our representation scheme achieves better retrieval effectiveness than the 9-DLT scheme.