Building visual vocabulary for image indexation and query formulation

With advances in digital imaging, the amount of digital images will increas e tremendously. To locate relevant images in a large collection of images p resents a challenging and genuine problem fur content-based retrieval resea rch. This paper presents a novel framework called visual keywords for image indexation and query formulation. Visual keywords are flexible and intuiti ve visual prototypes specified perceptually from sample domain images. A vi sual content is described and indexed by flexible spatial aggregation of th e soft presence of visual keywords. A new query method based on visual cons traints is also proposed to allow direct and explicit. content specificatio n. Last but nor least, we have developed a digital album prototype to demon strate query and retrieval on both home photos and stuck photos based on vi sual keywords.