Collaborative concept tagging for images based on ontological thinking

Abstract

Without textual descriptions or label information of images, searching semantic concepts in image databases is a very challenging task. Automatic annotation techniques for images are aimed to detect objects which are located visually inside images, like a tiger in grass. One challenge which remains to be solved is "Understanding". Image understanding is something beyond automatic annotation scope. The second issue is manual annotation of images. In manual annotation, user contribution is important. In this demo, we have developed an online tool which simulates a collaborative environment to help users to generate several facts for selected images. Ontological thinking led us to devise a method for a simple user interface. We are also studying the construction of synergies out of generated facts for our future work. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.