Automatic Generation of the Initial Query Set for CBIR on the Mobile Web

Despite the rapid growth of wallpaper image downloading service in the mobile contents market, users experience high levels of frustration in searching for desired images, due to the absence of intelligent searching aid. Although Content Based Image Retrieval is the most widely used technique for image retrieval in the PC-based system, its application in the mobile Web environment poses one major problem of not being able to satisfy its initial query requirement because of the limitations in user interfaces of the mobile application software. We propose a new approach, so called a CF-fronted CBIR, where Collaborative Filtering (CF) technique automatically generates a list of candidate images that can be used as an initial query in Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) by utilizing relevance information captured during Relevance Feedback. The results of the experiment using a PC-based prototype system verified that the proposed approach not only successfully satisfies the initial query requirement of CBIR in the mobile Web environment but also outperforms the current search process.