Query Retrieval Research Articles

A software environment for image database research

Image databases that allow retrieval of data by referring to the image contents need an image analysis module. In this paper we will describe the features of ‘I-see’, a knowledge-based software environment that we have designed specifically for image analysis. We will assess the usefulness of this tool for the development of interpretation modules for image databases. Two important research topics are investigated. First, precompilation of the image contents is necessary for efficient retrieval. Second, query by image contents must allow access to objects and situations represented in the images. Our approach will be to look at these database functionalities in general image analysis terms. In this sense, precompilation will be considered as a special case of image interpretation, query specification as a form of model description while query retrieval will be viewed in terms of model instantiation and selection. Although the ‘I-see’ tool already contains features that can be used as image database parts, the paper will consider the tool as a research platform rather than as an image database module.

Information Technology and the Research Process. Mary Feeney , Karen Merry

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsInformation Technology and the Research Process. Mary Feeney , Karen MerryDonald CaseDonald Case Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Library Quarterly Volume 61, Number 3Jul., 1991 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/602380 Views: 2Total views on this site Citations: 4Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1991 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Carole L. Palmer Scholarly work and the shaping of digital access, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 56, no.1111 (Jan 2005): 1140–1153.https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20204Geoffrey Yeo Understanding Users and Use: A Market Segmentation Approach, Journal of the Society of Archivists 26, no.11 (Apr 2005): 25–53.https://doi.org/10.1080/00039810500047425Youngok Choi, Edie M. Rasmussen Searching for images: The analysis of users' queries for image retrieval in American history, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 54, no.66 (Jan 2003): 498–511.https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.10237Lokman I. Meho, Helen R. Tibbo Modeling the information-seeking behavior of social scientists: Ellis's study revisited, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 54, no.66 (Jan 2003): 570–587.https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.10244

An analysis of ill-formed input in natural language queries to document retrieval systems

We analyzed natural language document retrieval queries from the Thomas Cooper Library at the University of South Carolina in order to investigate the frequency of various types of ill-formed input, such as spelling errors, co-occurrence violations, conjunctions, ellipsis and missing or incorrect punctuation. The primary reason for analyzing ill-formed inputs was to determine whether there is a significant need to study ill-formed inputs in detail. After analyzing the queries, we found that most of the queries were sentence fragments and that many of them contained some type of ill-formed input. Conjunctions caused the most problems. The next most serious problem was caused by punctuation errors. Spelling errors occurred in a small number of the queries. The remaining types of ill-formed input considered, ellipsis and co-occurrence violations, were not found in the queries.

An adaptive mixed relation decomposition algorithm for conjunctive retrieval queries

The paper proposes an adaptive relation decomposition algorithm for conjunctive retrieval queries and provides some hard experimental data for its performance analysis. Our algorithm performs horizontal relation partitioning first, followed by vertical partitioning of every horizontal cut created in the first step. Since the problem of the optimal relation decomposition is NP-hard, the proposed algorithm, as based on heuristics, is not optimal. Defining the relative savings as the ratio between the cost of answering a set of queries in the relation without decomposition and the cost of answering the same set of queries in the decomposed relation, the algorithm gives significant relative savings (250–300%) for realistic test relations and query patterns. These savings can be obtained only for an application with a query pattern that is stable over a time long enough to sense the pattern and propose a relation decomposition, to actually decompose the relation (or modify its decomposition), and to pay back for the decomposition cost. A surprising result is that the relative savings do not decrease even when the pages (blocks) on which a relation is stored are small.

Spatial indexing in binary decomposition and spatial bounding

In spatial database systems, data objects are of non-zero size and are associated with space coordinates. Efficient query retrieval on spatial relationships relies upon auxiliary data structures to support spatial indexing of these objects. The underlying indexing structures must support efficient spatial operations, such as locating the neighbors of an object. In Proc. IEEE Comput. Software & Applic. Conf, pp. 433–438 [1], we proposed an indexing structure called the skd-tree. This paper is a follow-up study of this initial design. In this paper, we describe the structure and related algorithms, the deletion algorithm in particular. Extensive experiments are presented. Performance study shows that the skd-tree is an efficient indexing mixture.

Expertext for medical care and literature retrieval

An expert system has been extended to a kind of expertext system and can be used to structure a query to a medical literature system and retrieve document citations. The expert system is built on the ROIS expert system shell, and the literature retrieval is from the Excerpta Medica document database EMBASE. The domain knowledge in ROIS is structured in a rich but small semantic net, while EMBASE has a massive, hierarchical, semantic net backbone. Queries that reason with the patient record and a medical semantic net so as to produce Boolean queries for literature retrieval have been implemented. The terms of these queries are then mapped into the semantic net of EMBASE. Finally, another reasoning strategy ranks documents to the query.

Altering retrieval demands reverses the picture superiority effect.

In Experiment 1 subjects studied a mixed list of pictures and words and then received either a free recall test or a word fragment completion test (e.g.,_yr_mi_forpyramid) on which some fragments corresponded to previously studied items. Free recall of pictures was better than that of words. However, words produced greater priming than did pictures on the fragment completion test, although a small amount of picture priming did occur. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the picture priming was not due to implicit naming of the pictures during study. In Experiment 4 subjects studied words and pictures and received either the word fragment completion test or a picture fragment identification test in which they had to name degraded pictures. Greater priming was obtained with words in word fragment completion, but greater priming was obtained with pictures on the picture identification test. We conclude that (1) the type of retrieval query determines whether pictures or words will exhibit superior retention, and (2)our results conform to the principle of transfer appropriate processing by which performance on transfer or retention tests benefits to the extent that the tests recapitulate operations used during learning.

A constant expected time, linear storage data structure for representing three-dimensional objects

The interrogation of spatial relations and properties of three-dimensional objects are often involved in applications programs for CAD/CADM and robotics. These interrogations can be expressed in terms of low-level data retrieval queries called access primitives (APs). A data structure is presented for storing spatial relations of three-dimensional objects such that the amount of storage is linearly proportional to the number of entities, and the response time for the APs is constant on the average. Linear storage for this data structure is the lower bound. The data structure is in the form of a symmetric graph. Using E, the total number of edges of the object, as the unit, it is shown that the storage requirement of the symmetric data structure is 6E. By defining nine general data structure accessing primitives, it is shown that any local topological query can be answered in constant time, on the average.

Optimal Retrieval Algorithms for Small Region Queries

Hashing, or address calculation, has traditionally been associated with the scattering of close records, and therefore with inefficiency for retrieval of range queries. But for answering small range queries it is possible to compromise between randomization and the togetherness of close records by hashing many intervals of keys—rather than many isolated keys—into each hash value. And for answering small region queries, i.e., conjunctions of small range queries, such “interval hashing” may be applied to each attribute of a record in a multiple-key hashing procedure. The resulting technique is called “box-array hashing,” since it maps an orthogonal array of boxes from the space of all possible records into each hash value. This paper analyzes the achievable efficiency of hashing techniques for answering small region queries, and presents strong analytic evidence suggesting that box-array hashing provides about the most efficient procedure for answering small region queries, among all hashing procedures of comparable randomization power.

A comparison of search term weighting

The term relevance weighting method has been shown to produce optimal information retrieval queries under well-defined conditions. The parameters needed to generate the term relevance factors cannot unfortunately be estimated accurately in practice; futhermore, in realistic test situations, it appears difficult to obtain improved retrieval results using the term relevance weights over much simpler term weighting systems such as, for example, the inverse document frequency weights.It is shown in this study that the inverse document frequency weights and the term relevance weights are closely related over a wide range of the frequency spectrum. Methods are introduced for estimating the term relevance weights, and experimental results are given comparing the inverse document frequency with the estimated term relevance weights.

THE ESTIMATION OF TERM RELEVANCE WEIGHTS USING RELEVANCE FEEDBACK

The term relevance weighting method has been shown to produce optimal information retrieval queries under well‐defined conditions. Unfortunately, the relevance weights cannot be determined in the absence of accurate knowledge of the occurrence frequencies of the terms in the relevant and non‐relevant documents of a collection. This study presents a realistic method for estimating the term relevance weights from information derived in an interactive search environment where relevance assessments for previously retrieved items are used later to construct improved query statements. Procedures are introduced for constructing the initial query weights by using estimated term relevance factors. These initial weights are then modified during the relevance feedback process by utilizing the occurrence frequencies of the terms in the retrieved documents obtained from an earlier search. The procedures used to construct the term relevance weights are covered in detail, and experimental output is included to illustrate the effectiveness of the methods.

THE USE OF AUTOMATIC RELEVANCE FEEDBACK IN BOOLEAN RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS

A technique is described for automatic reformulation of boolean queries. Based on patron relevance judgements of an initial retrieval, prevalence measures are derived for terms appearing in the retrieved set of documents that reflect a term's distribution among the relevant and non‐relevant documents. These measures are then used to guide the construction of a boolean query for a subsequent retrieval. To illustrate the technique, a series of tests is described of its application to a small data base in an experimental environment. Results compare favourably with feedback as employed in a SMART‐type system. More extensive testing is suggested to validate the technique.

An Integrated Digital Mapping System

There is an increasing demand for terrain information in digital form in addition to graphical format. Under such circumstances the establishment of a national digital topographic data base can be envisaged and implemented to serve the needs for terrain data in either digital and/or graphical format. This paper discusses the digital interactive photogrammetric data acquisition system, interactive cartographic editing and automated drafting. The concepts of digital topographic data bank and data base are discussed as well as the requirements for selective retrieval and data base query language capability.

Record block allocation for retrieval on secondary keys

Query retrieval based on secondary keys is an important operation in retrieval systems. Such a query generally retrieves more than one data record which satisfies the query criterion. This paper studies the problem of record address allocation in disk-like devices so as to facilitate the fast retrieval of a set of records which are jointly accessed by a query. A heuristic scheme, using the proposed minimal access retrieval property, is designed to assign records to blocks. Some experimental results are also presented.

Avoiding redundant record accesses in unsorted multilist file organizations

Query retrieval procedures in a multilist organization are briefly reviewed. Existing procedures require that the multilists be sorted so as to facilitate fast query retrieval. But sorted multilists render online file updating tasks more difficult to perform than when no sorting order is imposed on the multilists. An algorithm is proposed in this paper to enable practically the same querying efficiency while the multilists need not be sorted. Hence, efficiencies in on-line querying and updating are simultaneously accomplished.

Interactive Graphics in Data Processing: Geometric relationships for retrieval of geographic information

Reported is an experimental technique that has been developed for retrieving, by geometrical means, information related to city maps. This paper emphasizes the analysis needed to translate a retrieval query into relationships among points, vectors, and polygons. An illustration of the technique is given.