A Metadata Model for Electronic Images

Finding images over the internet can be trying at best. Many industries such as advertising, marketing, image consultants, print media, and medical imaging deal with electronic images on a daily basis. Images are often stored by some non-descriptive ordering system and come in a variety of formats. Using image metadata, information such as the physical, technical and content related characteristics can be captured. Prior research has primarily addressed specific types of images and addressed the storage of metadata in a database format. This paper presents a Resource Description Framework Schema for the generic categorization of electronic image characteristics and traits. This schema is useful for image management and can be widely utilized in document management systems which traditionally use film and optical technology to store images. An image editor is prototyped with the capability of annotating the metadata into the image or exporting image metadata into other business oriented systems.