Content-Free Image Retrieval by Combinations of Keywords and User Feedbacks

The performance of a new content-free approach to image retrieval is demonstrated. Accumulated user feedback data that specify which images are (ir)relevant to each other and keywords obtained from a network game are recycled through collaborative filtering techniques to retrieve images without analyzing actual image pixels. Experimental results show the proposed method outperforms a conventional content-based approach using support vector machine. The result was achieved by the combination of feedback data and keywords. Applications of the proposed scheme in query-by-text image retrieval is also discussed.