| Introduction |
ImageCLEF is the cross-language
image retrieval track which is run as part of the
Cross Language Evaluation Forum (CLEF)
campaign. The ImageCLEF retrieval benchmark was established in 2003 with the
aim of evaluating image retrieval from multilingual document collections. Images by their very nature are language
independent, but often they are accompanied by texts
semantically related to the image (e.g. textual captions or metadata). Images
can then be retrieved using primitive features based on pixels with form the
contents of an image (e.g. using a visual exemplar), abstracted features
expressed through text or a combination of both. The language used to express
the associated texts or textual queries should not affect retrieval, i.e. an
image with a caption written in English should be searchable in languages other
than English.
ImageCLEF provides tasks for both system-centered and
user-centered retrieval evaluation within two main areas: retrieval of images
from photographic collections and retrieval of images from medical collections.
These domains offer realistic scenarios in which to test the performance of
image retrieval systems, offering different challenges and problems to
participating research groups. A major goal of
ImageCLEF is to investigate the effectiveness of combining text and image for
retrieval and promote the exchange of ideas which may help improve the
performance of future image retrieval systems.
ImageCLEF has already seen participation from both
academic and commercial research groups worldwide from communities including:
Cross-Language Information Retrieval (CLIR), Content-Based Image Retrieval
(CBIR) and user interaction. More information on past and current ImageCLEF
campaigns can be found here:
ImageCLEF is also described more fully
in the following publications: Clough, P., Mueller, H. and Sanderson, M. (2005),
The CLEF Cross
Language Image Retrieval Track (ImageCLEF) 2004, Eds (Peters, C.,
Clough, P., Gonzalo, J., Jones, G., Kluck, M. and Magnini, B.) Fifth Workshop
of the Cross-Language Evaluation Forum (CLEF 2004), Lecture Notes in
Computer Science (LNCS), Springer, Heidelberg, Germany (in print).
Mueller, H., Geissbuhler, A.,
Marchand-Maillet, S. and Clough, P. (2004),
Benchmarking
image retrieval applications, In proceedings of the Seventh
International Conference on Visual Information Systems, San Francisco, USA,
September 8-10, 2004
Clough, P.,
Sanderson, M. and Mueller, H. (2004),
A proposal for the
CLEF Cross-Language Image Retrieval Track 2004, Poster at Conference for
Video and Image Retrieval (CVIR 2004).
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| Organisers of
ImageCLEF |
ImageCLEF was originally proposed by Mark Sanderson and Paul
Clough from the Department of
Information Studies, University of Sheffield. However, today ImageCLEF is
organised and run voluntarily by a much larger number of individuals and
research groups.
Image retrieval from
photographic collections
Paul Clough,
Department of Information Studies, University of Sheffield, UK (p.d.clough@sheffield.ac.uk)
Mark Sanderson, Department of
Information Studies, University of Sheffield, UK (m.sanderson@sheffield.ac.uk)
Michael Grubinger,
School of Computer Science and
Mathematics, Victoria University, Australia (michael.grubinger@research.vu.edu.au)
Image retrieval
from medical collections
Henning Mueller,
University and University Hospitals
of Geneva, Switzerland (henning.mueller@sim.hcuge.ch)
William
Hersh, Oregon Health and Science
University, USA (hersh@ohsu.edu)
Thomas
Deselaers, IRMA group, Aachen University of Technology (RWTH), Germany (deselaers@i6.informatik.rwth-aachen.de)
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