Patent ID: 7817862

Claim:
A non-transitory computer-readable recording medium that stores therein a computer program for image retrieval, said program causing a computer to perform a process comprising: setting a feature and a use condition for each of a plurality of representative query images; receiving a query image; extracting the feature and the use condition from each of the representative query images; calculating a similarity between the query image and each of the representative query images; determining which one of features that are extracted from the representative query images at the extracting is to be used in the image retrieval based on whether the similarity satisfies the use condition extracted at the extracting; retrieving at least one image from among a plurality of images by calculating a similarity between the query image and each of the images with respect to the feature that is determined to be used at the determining; and outputting the image retrieved at the retrieving, wherein each of the representative query images has a plurality of sample images, the setting includes setting an i-th use condition for an i-th representative query image of the representative query images based on a similarity between the i-th representative query image and each of the sample images thereof with respect to an i-th feature that is set for the i-th representative query image, where i is a positive integer, the similarity based on which the i-th use condition is set is represented by a distance between the i-th representative query image and each of the sample images thereof, and the setting includes setting the i-th use condition based on a probability density distribution of the sample images of the i-th representative query image.