Mind the Gap: Content-Based Image Retrieval and the User Interface

Abstract

The user interface is the principal component responsible for facilitating human-computer interaction in an information retrieval system and provides the medium between the end user and the system. Query formulation is a core activity in the process of information retrieval and a number of query paradigms have been proposed for specifying a query Qn in an image database I. Despite being identified as one of the major research areas, few studies have investigated the user interface for specifying visual queries and the area remains an open research issue. This chapter presents an overview of user interface research activity and related areas in the field of content-based image retrieval.