Patent ID: 8422831

Claim:
An information management apparatus comprising: a processor; a memory; a characteristic-amount management unit that manages a characteristic amount for each piece of information; a characteristic-amount association unit that maintains an association with a similar characteristic amount among characteristic amounts managed by the characteristic-amount management unit for each of the characteristic amounts; a space index management unit that manages a space index for the characteristic amounts managed by the characteristic-amount management unit; a partial space determination unit that determines a partial space in the space index to which a first characteristic amount belongs in accordance with a request for retrieving a characteristic amount similar to the first characteristic amount; and a similarity determination unit that calculates similarity between the first characteristic amount and a second characteristic amount other than the first characteristic amount belonging to the partial space and between the first characteristic amount and a third characteristic amount associated with the second characteristic amount by the characteristic-amount association unit, and determines which characteristic amounts are similar to the first characteristic amount based on a comparison between the calculated similarity and a predetermined threshold, wherein the partial space is the minimum unit of a characteristic amount space, and the first characteristic amount and the second characteristic amount are included in the partial space.