XIRS: an XML-based image retrieval system.

This paper presents a formalization of an image retrieval system based on a notion of similarity between images in a multimedia database (namely XML-Enabled Database) and where a user request can be an image file or a keyword. The CBIR (Content Based Image Retrieval) system and the current search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo….) make image search possible only when the query is a keyword. This type of search is limited because keywords are not expressive enough to describe all important characteristics of an image. For example, an exact match request cannot be formulated in such systems. Thus, we propose a search system in which a request might be an image file or a keyword. The MPEG-7 standard is used for describing an image as an XML document. A similarity distance between images is defined which is used to compare the request image with the images of a database. We also propose an algorithm to calculate a similarity distance between two XML nodes with a given precision ‘k’ (k is defined by the user: he can fix ‘k’ at 100% for the exact match retrieval of features) so as to be able to provide accurate information in response to a user request. The statistics show that our system is more efficient than leading content based image retrieval systems such as ERIC7 and current search engines.