Patent ID: 7430566

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; determining a maximum frequency from a maximum value of bigram and unigram frequencies; estimating, via the statistical bigram correlation model, a respective semantic correlation between each image 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 said each image of the pair is indicated to be a semantically relevant image, said each respective bigram frequency representing a probability of whether two images that are semantically related to one-another based on a co-occurrence frequency, each image of the two images was relevant in a previous query/feedback session, wherein the estimating the respective semantic correlation further comprises: associating a respective unigram frequency with each respective image of the images, the respective unigram frequency indicating that said each respective image of the images is either semantically relevant, semantically less relevant, or a non-feedback image, the unigram frequency being based on relevance feedback to a session of the respective multiple search sessions, wherein the respective semantic correlation is further based on the maximum frequency; and displaying, responsive to a user operation in an image retrieval session, one or more ranked images to a user based on the respective semantic correlation.