Abstract

This paper reviews a number of recently available techniques in contentanalysis of visual media and their application to the indexing, retrieval,abstracting, relevance assessment, interactive perception, annotation and re-use of visualdocuments. 1. Background A few years ago, the problems of representation and retrieval of visualmedia were confined to specialized image databases (geographical, medical, pilot experimentsin computerized slide libraries), in the professional applications of the audiovisualindustries (production, broadcasting and archives), and in computerized training or education. The presentdevelopment of multimedia technology and information highways has put content processing of visualmedia at the core of key application domains: digital and interactive video, large distributed digital libraries, multimedia publishing. Though the most important investments have been targeted at the information infrastructure (networks, servers, coding and compression, deliverymodels, multimedia systems architecture), a growing number of researchers have realized thatcontent processing will be a key asset in putting together successful applications. The need for contentprocessing techniques has been made evident from a variety of angles, ranging from achievingbetter quality in compression, allowing user choice of programs in video-on-demand, achieving betterproductivity in video production, providing access to large still image databases or integrating still images and video in multimedia publishing and cooperative work. Content-based retrieval of visual media and representation of visualdocuments in human-computer interfaces are based on the availability of content representationdata (time-structure for

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