language: en

M.I.T Media Laboratory Perceptual Computing Section
Technical Report No. 358

[Also to appear: Springer Verlag Workshops in Computing, MIRO 95, Invited Paper, Glasgow, Sep. 95]

Toward a Visual Thesaurus

Rosalind W. Picard
MIT Media Laboratory,
20 Ames St., Cambridge, MA 02139
picard@media.mit.edu,

Abstract A thesaurus is a book containing synonyms in a given language; it provides similarity links when trying to retrieve articles or stories about a particular topic. A "visual thesaurus" works with pictures, not words. It aids in recognizing visually similar events, "visual synonyms," including both spatial and motion similarity. This paper describes a method for building such a tool, and recent research results in the MIT Media Lab which contribute toward this goal. The heart of the method is a learning system which gathers information by interacting with a user of a database. The learning system is also capable of incorporating audio and other perceptual information, ultimately constructing a representation of common sense knowledge.

1 Introduction