Using contextual information for image retrieval

Visual information retrieval presents many challenges for the computer vision community. The terabytes of visual information stored in digital image and video libraries will remain inaccessible if the problems of indexing and retrieval are not addressed. We present techniques for content based image retrieval using higher level contextual information. The content is represented and queried using attributed relational graphs, with colour attributes and relaxation labelling techniques. We present retrieval examples using both synthetic and real images of national flags. This, although a simplistic problem, highlights the shortcomings and difficulties associated with content based retrieval systems.