Report on CIR99, the 2nd UK Conference on“The Challenge of Image Retrieval”
Newcastle upon Tyne, 25-26 February 1999
David J. Harper
Image (including video) storage andretrieval is arguably one of the most exciting
and fastest-growing research areas in thefield of multimedia technology. The First
Challenge of Image Retrieval Conference
held in February 1998 was the first UK
forum set up specifically to bridge the gap
between the different research andpractitioner communities with an interest in
image storage and retrieval. The second
Conference in the series again brought
together researchers and practitioners, inorder to exchange information and ideas on
significant developments in related
disciplines and the challenges facing theuser communities.
This short article provides a personal viewon the Second Challenge of Image Retrieval
Conference, based on a final summary
presented by the author at the conference. It
is by necessity partial due to space and time
constraints, and you are referred toadditional sources of information at the endof this article.
The conference got off to a flying start witha session on “Content-based Image Retrieval
technology: can we make it deliver?”presented by John Eakins and MargaretGraham of the Institute of Image Data
Research, University of Northumbria. They
presented the initial findings of a JISC1
funded study on the state-of-the-art ofContent-based Image Retrieval (CBIR)
technology, and this was followed bydiscussion based on short position
statements by representatives drawn fromthe user communities. Three main messages
emerged from this session. First, there is a1

Joint Information Systems Committee,organisation responsible for provision of anational network infrastructure and exploitationof information systems for the UK Higher
Education and research council communities.

considerable gulf between what CBIR candeliver, which is mainly low-level feature
based retrieval, and what users “really,really want”, which is retrieval based on
semantic features. Second, that there isconsiderable scope for progress in hybrid
and cross-media IR, and that the (structured)
text and image hybrid system is ofcontinuing interest and importance to theend users, e.g. stock photograph archives.
Third, that the short-term impact of CBIR is
likely to be in specialist application areas
such as fingerprint, trademark and face
image retrieval.
Michael Swain of Cambridge ResearchLaboratory, Compaq (Cambridge, Mass.)presented an excellent keynote on theresearch and practical challenges ofsearching for (still) image and video on theWeb. He described the challenges indeveloping Alta Vista's Photo Finder, and an
earlier image search engine, WebSeer.
Interestingly, much of the image retrieval
functionality in Photo Finder is based on
text retrieval techniques. Less surprisingly,perhaps, is that scaleability and performanceare major issues, and that possible CBIR
solutions may be rejected on this basis. The
speaker stressed the end user/customer focusof his research, and highlighted the researchbenefits of this applied research approach,namely that interesting and relevant research
problems emerge. One example was theidentification of “near duplicate” images forassisting users in identifying copyrightviolations, an application incidentally thatmakes extensive use of CBIR techniques.
Three sessions of the conference weredevoted to the presentation of research
papers, where the themes of these sessions
were “CBIR applications”, “CBIRtechniques” and “New approaches to Image
Data Management”. You are referred to theElectronic Proceedings (see below) for theabstracts and papers. A number of clear
trends emerged from the presentations, andfrom discussions throughout the conference,these being:• The challenge of bridging the gap
between low-level feature indexing
and matching techniques, and theactual user need for high-level
semantic retrieval (a long standing
problem for text in the IRcommunity too!), and the role forvarious techniques in meeting thischallenge, namely:• the role of “text” (automaticindexing, keyword and thesaurus
approaches) in hybrid text/image
systems, which was referred to by
one speaker as “thecomplementarity of CBIR and text(metadata)”;• the role of browsing andvisualisation as alternatives toquerying, where browsing by users“supplies” the semanticinterpretation; and• the role of “whole image”
approaches to image indexing andretrieval, e.g. the use of power
spectra and machine learning forclassification of images.
The (continuing) need for customer and end
user orientation and focus in order to informand make relevant the research we do, andthis through:• establishing end user and customer
requirements and needs throughethnographic studies, requirements
analysis, etc.;• identifying “real world” problems,
which require fundamental research,e.g. the “near duplicate” problem,
scaleability, support for hybrid
indexing approaches, etc;
• emphasis on good user interface
design, possibly in tandem with HCI
experts; and• developing and employing soundand appropriate techniques forevaluating CBIR-based tools andsystems, where evaluation is built
organically into the projects weundertake.
• A developing interest in video
indexing and retrieval, based on theneed to manage and access large,
video archives and repositories,
where much of this demand stemsfrom consumer products, e.g. videoon-demand, broadband TV, and soon. Naturally, the research trends
identified above hold as much, if not
more, for video IR applications, inwhich the needs of users are evenless well understood.
The final session of the conference
concerned emerging standards for image
retrieval.
Alan Lock of the Technical Advisory
Service for Images (TASI) presented athought-provoking talk on the “Importanceof Standards”, a message which I am surewould not be lost on figures in public life.
He highlighted both the benefits ofstandards, which include underpinning fordeveloping product markets, but at the sametime indicated some of the pitfalls, namelypremature choices of technologicalsolutions. Michael Day of the UK Officefor Library and Information Networking
presented a talk on “Metadata for Images”,
in which he mainly concentrated on themetadata formats developed under theDublin Core initiative and the Consortiumfor the Interchange of Museum Information(CIMI) standard. This work highlights,again, the importance of text (in this casestructured metadata) in multimedia retrieval,and indeed indicates the appropriateness ofthe expression “a picture is worth a 1000words”. Indeed, image libraries areprepared to provide this metadata, using
skilled, human indexers.
Finally, Edward Hartley of the University ofLancaster, gave an excellent overview of thework on the new MPEG-7 standard, and thelikely impact of this standard. The standard
is intended to “provide a framework within
which to progress the evolution of media
objects from undifferentiated BLOBs tofully searchable, retrievable and indexed
content items with the same flexible accesscapability that we expect from text” (myemphasis). Potentially, this is a far-reaching
standard, and the speaker encouraged theCBIR community to get involved in thisstandards work. These presentations werefollowed by wide-ranging question-andanswer and discussion session, ably chairedby Peter Enser, in which Edward Hartleyfielded some challenging questions on
MPEG-7. So, the conference came fullcircle, and ended with a challenge!
In addition to the formal plenary sessions,
there was also an opportunity to view
systems demonstrations, both research
prototypes and products, and to view
posters. Typically, much of the conference
activity centred on informal discussions at
dinner and afterwards, and from a social
perspective, the conference was also
undoubtedly a success. The Challenge ofImage Retrieval Conference was organisedby the Institute for Image Data Research,
University of Northumbria at Newcastle, on
behalf of its sponsors2, and the Institute staff
should be congratulated on the excellence ofthe local arrangements.
Professor David J. Harper,
School of Computer and MathematicalSciences,
The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen

2

The Conference was co-sponsored by: theInstitute for Image Data Research, University ofNorthumbria at Newcastle; The British
Computer Society Information Retrieval
Specialist Group; The British Library Researchand Innovation Centre; The Institute ofInformation Scientists; and The Robert Gordon
University, Aberdeen. The event was also
supported by the British Machine Vision
Association and The Institution of ElectricalEngineers.

(co-chair of CIR99 with Dr. John Eakins,
University of Northumbria at Newcastle)
Additional Sources of Information“Challenge of Image Retrieval” Conference
website at
http://www.unn.ac.uk/iidr/conference.html
has details of CIR98 and CIR99, including
for each conference, the call for papers,
programme, and abstracts of the keynote,
invited speaker and posters.
Electronic proceedings of CIR98 (andCIR99 when approved by eWiC Editor) attheBCS “electronic Workshops in Computing”
website (projected launch date: 19th March1999) at http://www.ewic.org.uk/
Details on obtaining copies of the JISCfunded study on the state-of-the-art of CBIRby Eakins and Graham, will be posted on
http://www.unn.ac.uk/iidr/
Further information and documents on
MPEG-7 at http://drogo.cselt.stet.it/mpeg/