Retrieval from Captioned Image Databases Using Natural Language Processing

It might appear that natural language processing should improve the accuracy of information retrieval systems, by making available a more detailed analysis of queries and documents. Although past results appear to show that this is not so, if the focus is shifted to short phrases rather than full documents, the situation becomes somewhat different. The ANVIL system uses a natural language technique to obtain high accuracy retrieval of images which have been annotated with a descriptive textual caption. The natural language techniques also allow additional contextual information to be derived from the relation between the query and the caption, which can help users to understand the overall collection of retrieval results. The techniques have been successfully used in a information retrieval system which forms both a testbed for research and the basis of a commercial system.