uBase: Web-based Image and Video Navigation

Overview

The overall aim of the project was to create a web-based image and video browser for content-based retrieval that integrates the current research into browsing and searching into a unified interface.   uBase Demo

The resulting browser provides the user with the power to browse a large image collection quickly and accurately. The project builds upon the work of Daniel Heesch into searching and browsing strategies.

The project's main focus was on the important issues of integrating the searching and browsing mechanisms, and improving the user-interface. The browser seamlessly integrates the following main features:

The browser and search engine is implemented under a client-server model. This enables us to centralise the search engine backend and the interface to the image collection. By using a Java applet-servlet model, we can provide a platform-independent client that can be loaded from a webpage.

Quick start

Click on the link below which will open the application in a new window. The application should open with the TRECVID image collection loaded. A brief introduction to using each of the panes is below. The buttons on the toolbar at the top allow you to step forward or back through your actions.

Search  ---  This is the main search window. Queries can be a combination of text and/or images. The left hand part of the screen is used to define the query and the right hand side to show the results. To enter a text query type the term into the "Search text" box and hit "Search now". Try searching on "baseball" as the collection comprises of news from the US! Images can be added to the query by right clicking on an image and choosing "Add image to query" from the menu. You can also vary the search weights given to each visual feature using the slider bars.

Clicking on an image selects it. It then appears in the temporal frame at the bottom of the screen. This shows the time sequence of keyframes around the selected image. For collections that do not have a time dimension this frame shows the images in the same category.

Categories  ---  This window shows the default categorisation for the image collection. You can browse the collection by clicking on the categories.

NNk network  ---  This window is an interface into the NNk network used in AETOS. The right hand pane shows the hub network, which consists of strongly connected images in the network. Selecting an image makes it appear in the left hand frame together with its neighbours. You can browse through the network by selecting further images.

Viewer  --- The viewer window displays a larger version of the image together with its details including keywords.

Output  --- The output page window you to build up a collection of images that you have found and then manipulate these.

Settings  --- This window allows you to change the configuration of the application. The image collection can be changed as can the  features used. Multiple features can be selected using the  control key. Other program settings can be changed by clicking on them and then changing the value in the input box. All changes should be actioned by clicking the relevant "apply" button.

Application Demo

The following links will open the uBase application in a new browser. It may take a little while to open depending on the speed of your Internet connection. Please note that
a recent Java browser plugin is required, if there is an issue you can download an
updated version of the Sun Java Runtime Environment from here.

    uBase: Public Version

    uBase: Private Version



Papers

A May: Web-based Image and Video Navigation   Final year project report. Department of Computing, Imperial College London



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