Automatic image annotation using visual content and folksonomies

Abstract

Automatic image annotation is an important and challenging task when managing large image collections. This paper describes techniques for automatic image annotation by taking advantage of collaboratively annotated image databases, so called visual folksonomies. Our approach applies two techniques based on image analysis: Classification annotates images with a controlled vocabulary while tag propagation uses user generated, folksonomic annotations and is therefore capable of dealing with an unlimited vocabulary. Experiments with a pool of Flickr images demonstrate the high accuracy and efficiency of the proposed methods in the task of automatic image annotation.