Real-time computerized annotation of pictures

Automated annotation of digital pictures has been a highly challenging problem for computer scientists since the invention of computers. The capability of annotating pictures by computers can lead to breakthroughs in a wide range of applications including Web image search, online picture-sharing communities, and scientific experiments. In our work, by advancing statistical modeling and optimization techniques, we can train computers about hundreds of semantic concepts using example pictures from each concept. The ALIPR (Automatic Linguistic Indexing of Pictures -Real Time)system of fully automatic and high speed annotation for online pictures has been constructed. Thousands of pictures from an Internet photo-sharing site, unrelated to the source of those pictures used in the training process, have been tested. The experimental results show that a single computer processor can suggest annotation terms in real-time and with good accuracy.