A next generation browsing environment for large image repositories

Next generation environments will change the way people work and live as they will provide new advances in areas ranging from remote work and education, e-commerce, gaming to information-on-demand. In many of these applications intelligent interpretation of multimedia data such as image, video and audio resources is necessary. In this paper we present an effective approach to handling image repositories providing the user with an intuitive interface of visualising and browsing large collections of pictures. Based on the idea of similarity-based organisation of images where images that are visually similar are located close to each other in visualisation space, images are projected onto a sphere with which the user can interact. Rotating the sphere reveals images of different colours while tilting operations focus on brighter or darker images. Large image collections are handled through a hierarchical approach that brings up similar, previously hidden, images when zooming in on an area. Furthermore, the way images are organised can be interactively changed by the user. Our next generation browsing environment has been successfully tested on a large database of several thousand images.

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