Hyperimages: using object recognition for navigation through images in multimedia

Multimedia involves the use of multiple forms of communication media in an interactive and integrated manner. At present, textual data is the media predominantly used to provide the interactivity due to the ease with which discrete semantic elements are identified. It is common practice to follow links from words or phrases within text to associated information elsewhere in the database. To achieve a similar degree of functionality with visual information typically requires that each image (or video sequence) be processed by hand, indicating the objects and locations within the image - a process that is excessively expensive and time-consuming for large databases. This paper describes the implementation of a simple object recognition system that allows the specification of 3D models that can then be used to recognize objects within any image, in an analogous fashion to words within text. This enables image data to become a truly active media, within a multimedia database. It provides a significantly enhanced level of functionality while keeping the authoring effort to a minimum. The basic algorithms are described and then an example application is outlined, along with feedback from users of the system.