Using 3D Spatial Relationships for Image Retrieval by Contents

Iconic environments for querying pictorial data bases allow to express spatial relationships between the objects in the images through appropriate icon positioning. Ali the experiences reporied in the Iiterature use 2D icons and the query is directly mapped along with the symbolic image descriptions. With this approach, spatial relationships between the objects represented in the image could not be reconstructed exactly. Specifically, ambiguities arise for the retrieval of images of real world scenes with 3D objects. In this paper, a visual environment is presented for image retrieval from a database of real world pictures. The environment differs from the other experiences reported in the literature, since the visual query is performed taking into account relationships between the objects in the scene that is represented in the image, rather than between the image subparts. A 3D iconic interface with 3D icons allows the user to define a virtual scene, which is used to perform the query. Images are stored in the database along with the descriptions of the 3D scenes they represent.