Experiments in retrieval of mineral information

The problems in image retrieval derive from the difficulty to exactly define and interpret the image content. In most cases, image retrieval techniques are based on the data base system techniques [6], [19] or the information retrieval systems, where the image content is represented in a text form [20]. Other image retrieval techniques require that the images belong to a specific domain which must be described in advance [25]. In this paper, we present the experiments in retrieval of multimedia mineral information using AMCIRS (A Multimedia Cognitive-based Information Retrieval System) [13]. The AMCIRS query based mechanism is based on a multimedia objects content search using the vector model. Each vector is composed of text and image objects. The image objects in the vectors are image object contours, represented by polygonal approximations. The content search process is deduced to the similarity estimation between the MM query and MM index vectors. The similarity function for image objects is based on the polygon similarity estimation. The basic elements of A Multimedia Cognitive-based Information Retrieval System called AMCIRS which integrates image and text information have been described elsewhere [12], [13]. In AMCIRS, the content search process is performed using the vector model [26], where the user query and the MM information are presented by the MM query and index vectors respectively. Each vector contains text and image objects. The image objects in the vectors are image object contours, represented by polygonal approximations [24]. The information selection in AMCIRS is based on the similarity estimation between the MM query and MM index vectors. The similarity function for the image objects is deduced to the polygon similarity estimation [14]. The experimental evaluation of AMCIRS retrieval effectiveness is expressed by the recall and precision parameters. Possible advantages of multiple media retrieval with respect to the single medium retrieval are also investigated and explicitly represented by the recall-precision diagrams.