Design, implementation and evaluation of SCORE (a system for content based retrieval of pictures)

We make use of a refined E-R model to represent the contents of pictures. We propose remedies to handle mismatches which may arise due to differences in perception of picture contents. An iconic user interface for visual query construction is presented. A naive user can specify his/her intention without learning a query language. A function which computes the similarity between a picture and a user's description is provided. Pictures which are sufficiently close to the user description, as measured by the similarity function, are retrieved. We present the results of a user-friendliness experiment to evaluate the user interface as well as retrieval effectiveness. Encouraging retrieval results and valuable lessons are obtained.<>