Designing a Multimedia Information System Using Internet Techology

This paper presents major technical requirements for designing and developing future distributed multimedia information system using Internet technology. The key requirements of this system are to allow users to search, access, and communicate multimedia documents consisting of text, audio, video and image. We emphasize the role of object-oriented technology for information management and real-time communication protocols to guarantee QoS. it presents a reference architecture for Web-based real-time distributed multimedia system which provides several functionalities including real-time distributed multimedia system which provides several functionalities including real-time streaming, multimedia indexing and searching, and distributed object management.     

Semantic processing of multimedia data for e-government applications

Knowledge management has become a challenge for almost all e-government applications where the efficient processing of large amounts of data is still a critical issue. In the last years, semantic techniques have been introduced to improve the full automatic digitalization process of documents, in order to facilitate the access to the information embedded in very large document repositories. In this paper, we present a novel model for multimedia digital documents aiming at improve effectiveness of digitalization activities within an information system supporting e-government organizations. At the best of our knowledge, the proposed model is one of the first attempts to give a single and unified characterization of multimedia documents managed by e-government applications, whereas semantic procedures and multimedia facilities are used for the transformation of unstructured documents into structured information. Furthermore, we define an architecture for the management of multimedia documents “life cycle”, which provides advanced functionalities for information extraction, semantic retrieval, indexing, storage, presentation, together with long-term preservation. Preliminary experiments concerning an e-health scenario are finally presented and discussed.     

Relevance feature mapping for content-based multimedia information retrieval

This paper presents a novel ranking framework for content-based multimedia information retrieval (CBMIR). The framework introduces relevance features and a new ranking scheme. Each relevance feature measures the relevance of an instance with respect to a profile of the targeted multimedia database. We show that the task of CBMIR can be done more effectively using the relevance features than the original features. Furthermore, additional performance gain is achieved by incorporating our new ranking scheme which modifies instance rankings based on the weighted average of relevance feature values. Experiments on image and music databases validate the efficacy and efficiency of the proposed framework.     

Interactive authoring of multimedia documents in a constraint-based authoring system

As multimedia applications spread widely, it is crucial for programming and design support systems to handle “time” in multimedia documents effectively and flexibly. This paper presents a set of interactive system support tools for designing and maintaining the temporal behavior of multimedia documents. The tool set provides mechanisms for anomaly detection, temporal query processing, and interactive scheduling. It is based on a fast incremental constraint solver we have developed, which can be adapted by any constraint-based system. The incremental constraint solver provides immediate feedback to the user, supporting a highly interactive design process. Combined with existing optimal layout generation mechanisms proposed in the literature, our tools effectively utilize the flexibility provided by constraint-based systems.     

An adaptive learning automata-based ranking function discovery algorithm

Due to the massive amount of heterogeneous information on the web, insufficient and vague user queries, and use of the same query by different users for different aims, the information retrieval process deals with a huge amount of uncertainty and doubt. Under such circumstances, designing an efficient retrieval function and ranking algorithm by which the most relevant results are provided is of the greatest importance. In this paper, a learning automata-based ranking function discovery algorithm in which different sources of information are combined is proposed. In this method, the learning automaton is used to adjust the portion of the final ranking that is assigned to each source of evidence based on the user feedback. All sources of information are first given the same importance. The proportion of a given source increases, if the documents provided by this source are reviewed by the user and decreases otherwise. As the proposed algorithm proceeds, the probability of appearance of each source in the final ranking gets proportional to its relevance to the user queries. Several simulation experiments are conducted on well-known data collections and query types to show the performance of the proposed algorithm. The obtained results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms several existing methods in terms of precision at position n, mean average precision, and normalized discount cumulative gain.     

面向多媒体文档的多通道检索系统

提出和实现了一个面向多媒体文档的多通道(对应多种模态,如文本、图像、视频等)检索系统.系统定义了一个新的用来描述多媒体文档内容的框架,该框架不但提取出多媒体文档在各通道下的基于内容的底层特征,而且还记录下多媒体文档中不同多媒体对象间的链接关系.同时,提出一种基于图模型的交叉参照知识库,用来存储从链接关系中挖掘出的多媒体对象间的语义关系,通过一个有效的语义上下文分析算法,在检索过程中计算每个对象与查询的语义相似度.语义上下文分析算法不仅使得基于内容的多媒体信息检索中考虑了多媒体对象的语义信息,同时支持用户通过通道切换的方式进行相关反馈,提供了一种较为灵活的查询模式.实验表明在交叉参照知识库基础上,该系统还能够有效地提高基于内容的多媒体对象的检索性能(如内容覆盖率等).     

An object-oriented multimedia database system for a news-on-demand application

We describe the design of a multimedia database management system for a distributed news-on-demand multimedia information system. News-on-demand is an application that uses broadband network services to deliver news articles to subscribers in the form of multimedia documents. Different news providers insert articles into the database, which are then accessed by users remotely, over a broadband, asynchronous transfer-mode (ATM) network. The particulars of our design are an object-oriented approach and strict adherence to international standards, in particular the Standard Generalized Mark-up Language (SGML) and Hy-Time. The multimedia database system has a visual query facility, which is also described in this paper. The visual query interface provides three major facilities for end users: presentation, navigation, and querying of multimedia news documents. The main focus, however, is the querying of multimedia objects stored in the database.     

Answering content and structure-based queries on XML documents using relevance propagation

As XML documents contain both content and structure information, taking advantage of the document structure in the retrieval process can lead to better identify relevant information units. In this paper, we describe an information retrieval (IR) approach dealing with queries composed of content and structure conditions. The XFIRM model we propose is designed to be as flexible as possible to process such queries. It is based on a complete query language, derived from XPath and on a relevance values propagation method. This paper aims at evaluating functions used in the propagation process, and particularly the use of distance between nodes as a parameter. The proposed method is evaluated, thanks to the INEX evaluation initiative. Results show a relative high precision of our proposal.     

Aggregating constraint satisfaction degrees expressed by possibilistic truth values

In information systems, one often has to deal with constraints in order to compel the semantics and integrity of the stored information or to express some querying criteria. Hereby, different constraints can be of different importance. A method to aggregate the information about the satisfaction of a finite number of constraints for a given data instance is presented. Central to the proposed method is the use of extended possibilistic truth values (to express the degree of satisfaction of a constraint) and the use of residual implicators and residual coimplicators (to model the impact and relevance of a constraint). The proposed method can be applied to any constraint-based system. A database application is discussed and illustrated.     

图像检索中的动态相似性度量方法

为提高图像检索的效率,近年来相关反馈机制被引入到了基于内容的图像检索领域。该文提出了一种新的相关反馈方法－－动态相似性度量方法。该方法建立在目前被广泛采用的图像相拟性度量方法的基础上,结合了相关反馈图像检索系统的时序特性,通过捕获用户的交互信息,动态地修正图像的相似性度量公式,从而把用户模型嵌入到了图像检索系统,在某种程度上使图像检索结果与人的主观感知更加接近。实验结果表明该方法的性能明显优于其它图像检索系统所采用的方法。     

Multimedia Clip Generation From Documents for Browsing on Mobile Devices

Small displays on mobile handheld devices, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and cellular phones, are the bottlenecks for usability of most content browsing applications. Generally, conventional content such as documents and Web pages need to be modified for effective presentation on mobile devices. This paper proposes a novel visualization for documents, called multimedia thumbnails, which consists of text and image content converted into playable multimedia clips. A multimedia thumbnail utilizes visual and audio channels of small portable devices as well as both spatial and time dimensions to communicate text and image information of a single document. The proposed algorithm for generating multimedia thumbnails includes 1) a semantic document analysis step, where salient content from a source document is extracted; 2) an optimization step, where a subset of this extracted content is selected based on time, display, and application constraints; and 3) a composition step, where the selected visual and audible document content is combined into a multimedia thumbnail. Scalability of MMNails that allows generation of multimedia clips of various lengths is also described. A user study is presented that evaluates the effectiveness of the proposed multimedia thumbnail visualization.     

Automatic authoring and construction of hypermedia for information retrieval

This paper describes the complete process and a tool for the automatic construction of a multimedia hypertext starting from a large collection of multimedia documents. Through the use of an authoring methodology, the document collection is automatically authored, and the result is a multimedia hypertext, also called a hypermedia, written in hypertext mark-up language (HTML), almost a standard among hypermedia mark-up languages. The resulting hypermedia can be browsed and queried with Mosaic, an interface developed in the framework of the World Wide Web Project. In particular, the set of methods and techniques used for the automatic construction of hypermedia is described in this paper, and their relevance in the context of multimedia information retrieval is highlighted.     

Rough set-aided keyword reduction for text categorization

The volume of electronically stored information increases exponentially as the state of the art progresses. Automated information filtering (IF) and information retrieval (IR) systems are therefore acquiring rapidly increasing prominence. However, such systems sacrifice efficiency to boost effectiveness. Such systems typically have to cope with sets of vectors of many tens of thousands of dimensions. Rough set (RS) theory can be applied to reducing the dimensionality of data used in IF/IR tasks, by providing a measure of the information content of datasets with respect to a given classification. This can aid IF/IR systems that rely on the acquisition of large numbers of term weights or other measures of relevance. This article investigates the applicability of RS theory to the IF/IR application domain and compares this applicability with respect to various existing TC techniques. The ability of the approach to generalize, given a minimum of training data is also addressed. The background of RS theory is presented, with an illustrative example to demonstrate the operation of the RS-based dimensionality reduction. A modular system is proposed which allows the integration of this technique with a large variety of different IF/IR approaches. The example application, categorization of E-mail messages, is described. Systematic experiments and their results are reported and analyzed.     

区间直觉模糊信息下的双向投影决策模型

研究权重完全未知、评价信息为区间直觉模糊数的多准则决策问题. 考虑犹豫度影响, 给出备选方案与正理想方案、负理想方案形成的向量表达方式, 提出一种针对区间直觉模糊信息的向量投影测度方法; 构建基于方案投影总偏差最小的非线性规划准则权重确定模型; 给出基于方案投影的相对贴近度测算公式, 并以此对方案进行排序. 最后通过算例对比分析表明了所提出方法的有效性和可行性.

     

A Scalable Toolkit for Designing Multimedia Authoring Environments

This paper introduces Kaomi, a scalable toolkit for designing authoring environments of multimedia documents. The underlying concept is to provide the designer of multimedia applications with a fast method to get an authoring system based on a set of synchronized views (the presentation view for displaying the document, the scenario view for showing the temporal organization of the document, ...) so that each view is the support of editing actions. Kaomi is flexible enough to support a variety of multimedia documents declarative formats. It is indeed a scalable toolkit since it provides facilities for extending and/or for modifying the resulting authoring environment. In addition, cross-platform portability is provided which allows operation in the heterogenous Internet environment. The use of Kaomi is mainly described through the design of two authoring environments: one for authoring a sub-set of the Smil standard of the W3C and the other one for Madeus, a constraint based multimedia language.     

Replay-based debugging of occam programs

Parallel programs are intrinsically non-deterministic, and therefore the techniques of cyclical debugging that are commonly used for sequential programs are not suitable for parallel ones. This paper proposes a method to reproduce Occam program behaviour. Saving information on the timer values input by the program and the guards selected at run-time on alternative commands allows program replay, i.e. it makes it possible to re-execute the program deterministically with the same inputs following the same instruction path. This enables the software developer to use tools such as debuggers and intrusive monitors to help identify program faults. After discussing possible implementations of the proposed technique, IRD (an interactive replay debugger for Occam programs) is described. Finally, the use of the IRD in a sample debug session is presented as an example.