Navidgator - Similarity Based Browsing for Image and Video Databases

A main problem with the handling of multimedia databases is the navigation through and the search within the content of a database. The problem arises from the difference between the possible textual description (annotation) of the database content and its visual appearance. Overcoming the so called - semantic gap - has been in the focus of research for some time. This paper presents a new system for similarity-based browsing of multimedia databases. The system aims at decreasing the semantic gap by using a tree structure, built up on balanced hierarchical clustering. Using this approach, operators are provided with an intuitive and easy-to-use browsing tool. An important objective of this paper is not only on the description of the database organization and retrieval structure, but also how the illustrated techniques might be integrated into a single system. Our main contribution is the direct use of a balanced tree structure for navigating through the database of keyframes, paired with an easy-to-use interface, offering a coarse to fine similarity-based view of the grouped database content.