Semantic Queries with Pictures: The VIMSYS Model

The goal of the VIMSYS project is to create an information management system that can retrieve images or parts of images in addition to textual data. The system allows users to incrementally formulate a query starting from semantic pictorial objects. 11 allows incompletely specified and similarity-based queries. This paper presents a new layered data model and the design of the query processing unit for this system. The data model is a combination of object-oriented and functional models, and permits multiple representations of image entities. The knowledge module guides the user to progrcssively refine similarity-based queries and to query by defining new semantic objects and composing its attributes. Design considerations for the access structure of the system are also discussed, alongwith some of the problems of creating efficient mecha-