Bridging the Semantic Gap: Exploring Descriptive Vocabulary for Image Structure

This poster summarizes the methodology and results from an experiment to collect terms used by subjects in the verbal description of images from the domains of abstract art, satellite imagery and photo-microscopy. The resulting natural language vocabulary was then analyzed to identify a set of concepts that were shared across subjects. These concepts were subsequently organized as a faceted vocabulary that can be used to describe the shapes and relationships between shapes that constitute the internal spatial composition -or internal contextuality -of images. This vocabulary has the potential to minimize the terminological confusion surrounding the representation of the content and internal composition of digital images in Content-Based Image Retrieval [CBIR] systems.