Patent ID: 7188097

Claim:
An optimal high-speed multi-resolution retrieval method on a large capacity database comprising the steps of: deriving the multi-resolution structure of a query “Q”; setting an initial minimum distance “d min ” to have the infinite value; setting respective values of “i” and “l” to be “1”; deriving “d 1 (X i , Q)”, where d l (X i , Q) is a distance between a histogram X i and query Q at a level l; deriving “d L (X i ,Q)”, where d L (X i , Q) is a distance between a histogram X i and query Q at a level L; based on results of the steps of deriving d l and d L , obtaining a final value of “d min ”; and selecting data having the final value of “d min ” as the best match. wherein the high-speed multi-resolution retrieval on the database is carried out using an inequality property expressed by the following expression: d ( X,Y )≡ d L ( X,Y )≧ d L-1 ( X,y )≧. . . ≧ d l ( X,Y )≧. . . ≧ d l ( X,Y )≧ d 0 ( X,Y ).