Fuzzy queries in multimedia database systems

Abstract

There are essential differences between multimedia databases (which may contain complicated objects, such as images), and traditional databases. These differences lead to interesting new issues, and in particular cause us to consider new types of queries. For example, in a multimedia database it is reasonable and natural to ask for images that are somehow `similar to' some fixed image. Furthermore, there are different ways of obtaining and accessing information in a multimedia database than information in a traditional database. For example, in a multimedia database, it might be reasonable to have a query that asks for, say, the top 10 images that are similar to a fixed image. This is in contrast to a relational database, where the answer to a query is simply a set. In this paper, we survey some new issues that arise for multimedia queries, with a particular focus on recent research by the author, developed in the context of the Garlic system at the IBM Almaden Research Center.