Section: Software
IKONA/MAESTRO Software
Participants : Nozha Boujemaa, Marin Ferecatu, Nicolas Hervé, Jean-Paul Chièze, Mathieu Coutaud, Alexis Joly, Mehdi Bouabta, Raffi Enficiaud, Mondher Khadhraoui, Souheil Selmi, Francois Fleuret.
IKONA is a framework for building Content Based Image Retrieval software prototypes. It has been designed and implemented in our team during the last four years [36] . The current version is fully generic and is highly adaptable to any CBIR scenario thanks to its level of abstraction. As a research environment, IKONA offers support to the researchers in their work by providing stable and tested tools. As an application, it can easily be deployed and used by non-specialist users.
IKONA is based on a client/server architecture. The communication between the two components is achieved through a proprietary network protocol. It is a set of commands the server understands and a set of answers it returns to the client. The communication protocol is extensible, i.e. it is easy to add new functionalities without disturbing the overall architecture. It is also modular and therefore can be replaced by any new or existing protocol dealing with multimedia information retrieval.
The main processes are on the server side. They can be separated in two main categories:
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offline processes: data analysis, features extraction and structuration
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on-line processes: answer the client requests
The images are characterised with Global signatures that are implemented in the server:
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Generic signatures: Colour, Shape and Texture features investigated at the IMEDIA Group.
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Specific signatures: Faces and signatures for fingerprints.
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Annotations: Some keywords.
Besides, two local signatures are included: The region-based description and the point-based one. The server uses image signatures and offers several types of query paradigms, available to the user through the graphical interfaces of the clients:
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query by global example: The user selects an entire image as visual query.
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partial queries: the user is looking for regions in images that are visually similar to a the selected region.
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relevance feedback on global and partial query: the user interacts with the system in a feedback loop, by giving positive and negative examples to help the system identify the category of images she/he is interested in [36] ;
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mental image search: Two different methods are investigated. The first is Target Image Search with relevance feed-back model based on mutual information, the second one consist on Logical Query Composition.
We have developed two main clients that can communicate with the server. A good starting point for exploring the possibilities offered by IKONA is our web demo, available at http://www-roc.inria.fr/cgi-bin/imedia/circario.cgi/bio_diversity?select_db=1 . This CGI client is connected to a running server with several generalist and specific image databases, including more than 23,000 images. It features query by example searches, switch database functionality and relevance feedback for image category searches. The second client is a desktop application. It offers more functionalities. More screen-shots describing the visual searching capabilities of IKONA are available at http://www-rocq.inria.fr/imedia/cbir-demo.html .
The architecture of this client/server software and several visual signatures were a subject of a deposit to APP. It is distributed to INA, AFP, INRA, Ministry of Interior, JRC and Alinari.
