VisualSEEk: a fully automated conte

VisualSEEk: a fully automated content-based image query system
1 We describe a highly functional prototype system for searching by visual features in an image database. The VisualSEEk system is novel in that the user forms the queries by diagramming spatial arrangements of color regions. The system finds the images that contain the most similar arrangements of similar regions. Prior to the queries, the system automatically extracts and indexes salient color regions from the images. By utilizing efficient indexing techniques for color information, region sizes and absolute and relative spatial locations, a wide variety of complex joint color/spatial queries may be computed. KEYWORDS: image databases, content-based retrieval, image indexing, similarity retrieval, spatial query. 1 INTRODUCTION In this paper we investigate a new content-based image query system that enables querying by image regions and spatial layout. VisualSEEk is a hybrid system in that it integrates feature-based image indexing with spatial query methods.