Patent ID: 7933452

Claim:
A visual image retrieval system, comprising: an image database for storing images; a preprocessor communicatively linked to the image database for segmenting the images and generating based upon segmented images a region-of-interest (ROI) extraction output; an ROI feature extraction module for computing ROI feature vectors based upon the output; global feature extraction module for computing global feature vectors based upon the output; an ROI feature vectors database for storing the ROI feature vectors; a global feature vectors database for storing the global feature vectors; a perceptually-relevant image search machine (PRISM) interface for displaying query images and retrieved images, wherein retrieved images are images retrieved in response to a user selecting at least one displayed query image; a search-and-retrieval module for searching and retrieving stored images for display with the PRISM interface in response to a user selecting at least one displayed query image; a global/ROI search module for selecting between a global search or an ROI search if more than one query image is selected, and for trigging the selected search.