Patent ID: 6173275
Filing Date: 2001-01-09
Classification: G06F,Y10S

Abstract:
In a computer having a processor and a storage, said storage storing a plurality of images in computer-readable form, a computer-implemented process for generating a set of prototypical feature vectors for representing the images, the process comprising:generating for each of a plurality of images, a plurality of continuous feature vectors from pixel data of the image;deriving from the continuous feature vectors a plurality of prototypical feature vectors, the prototypical feature vectors providing a vocabulary of image features for representing the images;associating each image with a plurality of prototypical feature vectors;associating each prototypical feature vector with an initial context vector;for each image, and for each prototypical feature vector associated with the image, modifying the context vector associated with the prototypical feature vector to be more similar to the context vectors associated with other prototypical feature vectors associated with the image; andstoring the modified context vectors, wherein the modified context vectors enable retrieval of selected images with feature vectors similar to feature vectors of a query image by comparison of a context vector associated with the feature vectors derived from the query image to the context vectors associated with the plurality of images.