Image data modeling for efficient content indexing

A data model is presented for the systematic representation of image content. The basic building block of the data model consists of facts, which may be modified and linked together in different ways to express the subject matter of an image. From the data model, a canonical image description may be automatically built, which can capture a rich content semantics. The canonical description may be used to construct a content-based index using a relational database structure. The database structure uses four tables which can be indexed and searched rapidly to provide fast image identification and retrieval. It is expected that the proposed approach may work in conjunction with picture keys, which are a pictorial summary of the underlying images, to provide a flexible scheme for building a powerful query model for the efficient retrieval of images by content for a variety of image database applications.