Patent ID: 7392233

Claim:
An image searching system comprising: an image database storing a plurality of database images, each of said plurality of database images having a plurality of features; a specifying controller for specifying a plurality of key images, each of said plurality of key images being specified by a user and having a respective plurality of features; an extracting controller for extracting common key image feature values for common key image features that are common to the plurality of key images; a calculating controller for comparing the common key image feature values, extracted by the extracting controller, with the respective feature values of the plurality of database images to thereby sequentially calculate similarities between each of the common key image feature values and respective ones of the database image feature values for each of the plurality of database images; and a searching controller for retrieving from the database at least one of the plurality of database images which is similar to the plurality of key images, based on a similarity calculated by the calculating controller.