Semi-Automatic Image Annotation.

: A novel approach to semi-automatically and progressively annotating images with keywords is presented. The progressive annotation process is embedded in the course of integrated keyword-based and content-based image retrieval and user feedback. When the user submits a keyword query and then provides relevance feedback, the search keywords are automatically added to the images that receive positive feedback and can then facilitate keyword-based image retrieval in the future. The coverage and quality of image annotation in such a database system is improved progressively as the cycle of search and feedback increases. The strategy of semi-automatic image annotation is better than manual annotation in terms of efficiency and better than automatic annotation in terms of accuracy. A performance study is presented which shows that high annotation coverage can be achieved with this approach, and a preliminary user study is described showing that users view annotations as important and will l...