Patent ID: 6901411

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for image retrieval using a statistical bigram correlation model, the method comprising: receiving a plurality of images responsive to multiple search sessions; determining whether the images are semantically relevant images via relevance feedback; estimating a respective semantic correlation between each of at least one pair of the images with a respective bigram frequency, each respective bigram frequency being based on multiple search sessions in which each image of the pair is indicated to be a semantically relevant image; wherein the respective semantic correlation is performed offline or online to calculate unigram and bigram frequencies from relevance feedback information, the unigram frequency being based on relevance feedback to a session of the multiple search sessions, the unigram frequency indicating that each respective image of the images is either semantically relevant to the session, semantically less relevant to the session, or a non-feedback image with respect to the session; and wherein each respective bigram frequency is based on a pair of unigram frequencies.