An Efficient Indexing and Search Technique for Multimedia Databases

We present a novel index-based approach for searching multimedia databases by content. Our approach integrates methods from classical full-text retrieval with the mathematical concept of groups acting on sets. This yields a flexible framework applicable to a wide range of content-based search problems such as audio- or image-identification. We propose space-e#cient indexing methods as well as very fast fault-tolerant searching algorithms. In contrast to other approaches, our query response times decrease with incresing query complexity. As a further main benefit, a concept of partial matches is an integral part of our technique. We demonstrate the capabilities of our approach with examples from content-based music- and image-retrieval