Patent ID: 8504546

Claim:
A method for searching a multimedia database including content images, videos and text documents, comprising: (a) receiving query data including one or more query images; and (b) searching the multimedia database for the closest match between said one or more query images and said content images based on a similarity score between said query images and a compared portion of said content images, wherein said similarity score is defined as a complement to a pictorial edit distance between the query image and the compared portion of said content images, said pictorial edit distance being asserted as a weighted sum of Insertion, Deletion, and Substitution Error terms; wherein an insertion term is defined as a one-to-many correspondence between blocks of pixels in the content image and blocks of pixels in the query image; wherein a deletion term is defined as a one-to-none correspondence between blocks of pixels in the content image and blocks of pixels in the query image; and wherein a substitution term is defined as a cost function associated with partial matching between blocks of pixels in the content image and blocks of pixels in the query image.