Views or Points of View on Images

Images like other multimedia data need to be described as it is difficult to grasp their semantics from the raw data. With the emergence of standards like MPEG-7, multimedia data will be increasingly produced together with some semantic descriptors. But a description of a multimedia data is just an interpretation, a point of view on the data and different interpretations can exist for the same multimedia data. In this paper we explore the use of view techniques to define and manage different points of view on images. Views have been widely used in relational database management systems to extend modeling capabilities, and to provide logical data independence. Since our image model is defined on an object-oriented model, we will first propose a powerful object-oriented mechanism based on the distinction between class and type. The object view is used in the image view definition. The image view mechanism exploits the separation of the physical representation in an image of a real world object from the real object itself to allow different interpretations of an image region. Finally we will discuss the implementation of the image view mechanisms on the existing object models.