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To get a general idea about the scale and progress of research on CBVIR and SBVIR for the past years, several searches in EI Compendex database (http://www.ei.org) for papers published in English from 1993 through 2012 (totally 20 years) have been made. In Table 1, the results of two searches in the title field for the numbers of English published papers (records) are listed, one term used is “image retrieval (IR)” and other term is “semantic image retrieval (SIR).” The papers found out by the second term should be a sub-set of the papers found out by the first term. Both numbers have a tendency of increasing in general for these 20 years, with some stabilization in the last five years, as can be seen clearly from Table 1.
Table 1. List of English records found in the title field of EI Compendex for the last 20 years
| Searching Terms | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | |
| (1) Image Retrieval | 25 | 20 | 70 | 89 | 80 | 131 | 155 | 161 | 191 | 233 | |
| (2) Semantic Image Retrieval | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 8 | |
| Ratio of (2) over (1) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1.12 | 1.25 | 1.53 | 2.58 | 3.11 | 2.09 | 3.43 | |
| Searching Terms | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | Total |
| (1) Image Retrieval | 241 | 358 | 417 | 418 | 476 | 605 | 586 | 615 | 535 | 612 | 6018 |
| (2) Semantic Image Retrieval | 11 | 18 | 30 | 28 | 37 | 44 | 36 | 37 | 36 | 40 | 342 |
| Ratio of (2) over (1) | 4.56 | 5.03 | 7.19 | 6.70 | 7.77 | 7.27 | 6.14 | 6.02 | 6.73 | 6.54 | 5.68 |
Key Terms in this Chapter
Content-Based Visual Information Retrieval (CBVIR): An umbrella including both CBIR and CBVR, as well as retrieval of other visual forms based on the contents they brought.
Image Engineering (IE): An integrated discipline/subject comprising the study of all the different branches of image and video techniques. As a general term for all image techniques, it could be considered as a broad subject encompassing mathematics, physics, biology, physiology, psychology, electrical engineering, computer science, automation, etc. Its advances are also closely related to the development of telecommunications, biomedical engineering, remote sensing, document processing, industrial applications, etc.
Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR): A process framework for efficiently retrieving images from a collection by similarity. The retrieval relies on extracting the appropriate characteristic quantities describing the desired contents of images. In addition, suitable querying, matching, indexing and searching techniques are required.
Content-Based Video Retrieval (CBVR): A process framework for efficiently retrieving required clip from video. The retrieval relies on the organization of video and non-linear search techniques.
MPEG-7: An international standard named “Multimedia content description interface” (ISO/IEC 15938). It provides a set of audiovisual description tools, descriptors and description schemes for effective and efficient access (search, filtering and browsing) to multimedia content.