Directed image search with local parallel feature axes

The browsing of large image data bases has become a standard problem not only on the web but also in private photo collections. Most browsing techniques build on high dimensional feature spaces that are reduced to one or two dimensions when presented to the user. As this approach does not scale well with the size of the data base we propose to use an interface based on the concept of parallel coordinates. Around the currently selected image, we collect images for each feature dimension, which vary only in this feature coordinate, and present them to the user in a row by row fashion. In this way the user can understand the individual feature dimensions independently. Besides directed image search the interface is well suited to explore classes of images and furthermore to evaluate how intuitive individual feature dimensions are for the user.