Patent ID: 8150216

Claim:
A computerized system for automated retrieval of images from an unstructured repository comprising: a region of interest (ROI) database that contains searchable entries representing images stored in the repository; an image locator that automatically locates images for analysis within the repository to populate the ROI database; an ROI classifier that segments images located by the image locator into a plurality of ROIs wherein each ROI contains image content associated with one or more actual features of a physical object in the ROI, the ROI classifier having a plurality of computer-implemented transform filters adapted to extract physical descriptors that describe the physical object from the image content for each ROI to be stored in the ROI database as a plurality of physical feature vectors, each physical descriptor corresponding to one of the one or more actual features of a physical object in the ROI associated with the image content, and each physical feature vector having a searchable data structure that includes at least an ROI type field and an ROI descriptor field for each physical descriptor; an ROI query module that interrogates the ROI database by searching the ROI database for images containing content associated with at least one true physical object requested by a user search request; an image search requestor that receives and formats the user search request for input to the ROI query module; and an image retrieval module that utilizes the searchable entries in the ROI database to access the images stored in the repository that have content generally matching the true physical object requested by the user search request.