MAIRS: a content-based multi-agent image retrieval system

With the incessant expanding of information, the processing content of multimedia is becoming more and more extensive. To use the vast of information efficiently and effectively, a content-based retrieval system has been designed. The system is composed of the image gathering agent, the query submitting agent server, the color retrieval agent, the texture retrieval agent, and the shape retrieval agent and search results integration agent and result browser. The image gather agent is responsible for collecting images from network and storing them in image database. The query submitting agent server offers query samples to other agents and offers the cooperation between other agents. The color retrieval agent offers the retrieval ability based color features in the image database. The texture retrieval agent offers the retrieval ability based on texture features in the image database. The shape retrieval agent offers the retrieval ability based on shape features in the image database. Search results integration agent is responsible for integrating the color retrieval agent, the texture retrieval agent, the shape retrieval agent and the query submitting agent and browser, which obtains the retrieval request from the query submitting agent and browser, then sends them to each agent by means of primitive. At meantime, it combines the results returned by each agent and sends them to browser for the user browsing. The experimental results have showed that all agents in the system can work cooperatively to retrieve image information.