Information Retrieval (IR)
Deals with the representation, storage
and retrieval of unstructured data
Topics of interest: systems, languages,
retrieval, user interfaces, data
visualization, distributed data sets
Classical IR deals mainly with text
The evolution of multimedia databases
and of the web have given new interest
to IR
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Multimedia IR
A multimedia information system that
can store and retrieve
attributes
 text
2D grey-scale and color images
1D time series
digitized voice or music
video
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Applications
Financial, marketing: stock prices, sales etc.
find companies whose stock prices move similarly
Scientific databases: sensor data
whether, geological, environmental data
Office automation, electronic encyclopedias,
electronic books
Medical databases X-rays, CT, MRI scans
Criminal investigation suspects, fingerprints,
Personal archives, text and color images
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Queries
Formulation of user’s information need
Free-text query
By example document (e.g., text, image)
e.g., in a collection of color photos find
those showing a tree close to a house
Retrieval is based on the understanding
of the content of documents and of
their components
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Goals of Retrieval
Accuracy: retrieve documents that the
user expects in the answer
With as few incorrect answers as possible
All relevant answers are retrieved
Speed: retrievals has to be fast
The system responds in real time
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Accuracy of Retrieval
Depends on query criteria, query
complexity and specificity
Attributes / Content criteria?
Depends on what is matched with the
query
How documents content is represented
Typically feature vectors
 Depends also on matching function
 Euclidean distance
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Speed of Retrieval
The query is compared (matched) with all
stored documents
The definition of similarity criteria (similarity
or distance function between documents) is an
important issue:
Similarity or distance function between documents
Matching has to fast: document matching has to be
computationally efficient and sequential searching
must be avoided
Indexing: search documents that are likely to
match the query
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Database
index
query
database
descriptions
documents
Doc1-FeactureVector
Doc2-FeactureVector
Doc1
Doc2
DocN
DocN-FeatureVector
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Main Idea
Descriptions are extracted and stored
Same or separate storage with documents
Queries address the stored descriptions
rather the documents themselves
Images & video: the majority of stored
data
Solution: retrieval by text
Text retrieval is a well researched area
Most systems work with text, attributes
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Problem
Text descriptions for images and video
contained in documents are not available
e.g., the text in a web site is not always
descriptive of every particular image
contained in the web site
Two approaches
human annotations
feature extraction
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Human Annotations
 Humans insert attributes, captions for
images and videos
 inconsistent or subjective over time and
users (different users do not give the
same descriptions)
 retrievals will fail if queries are
formulated using different keywords or
descriptions
 time consuming process, expensive or
impossible for large databases
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Feature Extraction
 Features are extracted from audio,
image and video






cheaper and replicable approach
consistent descriptions but
inexact
low level feature (patterns, colors etc.)
difficult to extract meaning
different techniques for different data
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Architecture of a IR System for Images
Furht at.al. 96
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Multimedia IR in Practice
Relies on text descriptions
Non-text IR
there is nothing similar to text-based
retrieval systems
automatic IR is sometimes impossible
requires human intervention at some level
significant progress have been made
domain specific interpretations
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Ranking of IR Methods
Ranking in terms of complexity and accuracy
 attributes
 text
 audio
 image
 video
accuracy
complexity
Combined IR based on two or more data types
for more accurate retrievals
Complex data types (e.g.,video) are rich
sources of information
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Similarity Searching
 IR is not an exact process
two documents are never identical!
they can be “similar”
searching must be “approximate”
The effectiveness of IR depends on the
types and correctness of descriptions used
types of queries allowed
user uncertainly as to what he is looking for
efficiency of search techniques
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Approximate IR
A query is specified and all documents
up to a pre-specified degree of
similarity are retrieved and presented
to the user ordered by similarity
Two common types of similarity queries:
range queries: retrieve all documents up to
a distance “threshold” T
nearest-neighbor queries: retrieve the k
best matches
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Distance - Similarity
Decide whether two documents are
similar
distance: the lower the distance, the more
similar the documents are
similarity: the higher the similarity, the
more similar the documents are
Key issue for successful retrieval: the
more accurate the descriptions are, the
more accurate the retrieval is
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Retrieval Quality Criteria
Retrieval with as few errors as possible
Two types of errors:
false dismissals or misses: qualifying but
non retrieved documents
false positives or false drops: retrieved
but not qualifying documents
A good method minimizes both
Ranking quality: retrieve qualifying
documents before non-qualifying ones
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Evaluation of Retrieval
“Given a collection of documents, a set of
queries and human expert’s responses to the
above queries, the ideal system will retrieve
exactly what the human dictated”
The deviations from the above are measured
number of retrieved relevantin answer
precision =
number of retrieved
number or retrieved relevantin answer
recall =
total number or relevantin the collection
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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precision
Precision-Recall Diagram
1
the ideal method
0,5
1
0,5
recall
 Measure precision-recall for 1, 2 ..N answers
 High precision means few false alarms
 High recall mean few false dismissals
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Harmonic Mean
 A single measure combining precision and recall
F =
2
1
+p
1
 r: recall, p: precision
r
 F takes values in [0,1]
 F  1 as more retrieved documents are relevant
 F 0 as few retrieved documents are relevant
 F is high when both precision and recall are high
 F expresses a compromise between precision and
recall
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Ranking Quality
The higher the Rnorm the better the ability of
a method to retrieve correct answer before

incorrect

S
S
1
 2 (1   ) if S max
0
S
max
Rnorm  
1
otherwise

A human expert evaluates the answer set
Then take answers in pairs: (relevant,irrelevant)
 S+ : pairs ranked correctly (the relevant entry
has retrieved before the irrelevant one)
 S- : pairs ranked incorrectly
 Smax+: total ranked pairs
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Searching Method
Sequential scanning: the query is
matched with all stored documents
slow if the database is large or
if matching is slow
The documents must be indexed
hashing, inverted files, B-trees, R-trees
different data types are indexed and
searched separately
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Goals of IR
Summarizing, there are two general
goals common to all IR systems
effectiveness: IR must be accurate
(retrieves what the user expects to see in
the answer)
efficiency: IR must be fast (faster than
sequential scanning)
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Approximate IR
A query is specified and all documents
up to a pre-specified degree of
similarity are retrieved and presented
to the user ordered by similarity
Two common types of similarity queries:
range queries: retrieve all documents up to
a distance “threshold” T
nearest-neighbor queries: retrieve the k
best matches
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Query Formulation
Must be flexible and convenient
SQL queries constraints on all
attributes and data types may become
very complex
Queries by example e.g., by providing an
example document or image
Browsing: display headers, summaries,
miniatures etc. or for refining the
retrieved results
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Access Methods for Text
Access methods for text are
interesting for at least 3 reasons
multimedia documents contain text, e.g.,
images often have captions
text retrieval has several applications in
itself (library automation, web search etc.)
text retrieval research has led to useful
ideas like, vector space model, information
filtering, relevance feedback etc.
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Text Queries
 Single or multiple keyword queries
 context queries: phrases, word proximity
 boolean: keywords with and, or, not
 Natural language: free text queries
 Structured search takes also text
structure into account and can be:
 flat or hierarchical for searching in titles,
paragraphs, sections, chapters
 hypertext: combines content-connectivity
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Keyword Matching
The whole collection is searched
no preprocessing
no space overhead
updates are easy
The user specifies a string (regular
expression) and the text is parsed using
a finite state automaton
KMP, BMH algorithms
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Error Tolerant Methods
Methods that can tolerate errors
Scan text one character at a time by
keeping track of matched characters
and retrieve strings within a desired
editing distance from query
Wu, Manber 92, Baeza-Yates, Connet 92
Extension: regular expressions built-up
by strings and operators: “pro (blem |
tein) (s | ε) | (0 | 1 | 2)”
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Error Counting Methods
Retrieve similar words or phrases e.g.,
misspelled words or words with
different pronunciation
editing distance: a numerical estimate
of the similarity between 2 strings
phonetic coding: search words with
similar pronunciation (Soundex, Phonix)
N-grams: count common N-length
substrings
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Editing Distance
Minimum number of edit operations that
are needed to transform the first
string to the second
edit operation: insert, delete, substitute
and (sometimes) transposition of
characters
d(si,ti) : distance between characters
usually d(si,ti) = 1 if si < > ti and 0 otherwise
edit(cordis,codis) = 1: r is deleted
edit(cordis, codris) = 1: transposition of rd
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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j
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
E.G.M. Petrakis
i 0 1
a
0 1
a 1 0
a 2 1
a 3 2
b 4 3
c 5 4
c 6 5
c 7 6
d 8 7
2
b
2
1
1
2
2
3
4
5
6
3
b
3
2
2
2
2
2
4
5
6
4
c
4
3
3
3
3
2
3
4
5
5
d
5
4
4
4
4
3
3
4
4
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d
6
5
5
5
5
4
4
4
4
initialization cost
total cost
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Damerau-Levenstein Algorithm
Basic recurrence relation (DP algorithm)
edit(0,0) = 0;edit(i,0) = i; edit(0,j) = j;
edit(i,j) = min{ edit(i-1,j) + 1, edit(i, j-1) + 1,
edit(i-1,j-1) + d(si,ti),
edit(i-2,j-2) +
d(si,tj-1) + d(si-1,sj) + 1
}
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Matching Algorithm
 Compute D(A,B)
 #A, #B lengths of A, B
 0: null symbol
 R: cost of an edit operation
D(0,0) = 0
for i = 0 to #A: D(i:0) = D(i-1,0) + R(A[i]0);
for j = 0 to #B: D(0:j) = D(0,j-1) + R(0B[j]);
for i = 0 to #A
for j = 0 to #B {
}
E.G.M. Petrakis
1. m1 = D(i,j-1) + R(0B[j]);
2. m2 = D(i-1,j) + R(A[i] 0);
3. m3 = D(i-1,j-1) + R(A[i] B[j]);
4. D(i,j) = min{m1, m2, m3};
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Classical IR Models
Boolean model
simple based on set theory
queries as Boolean expressions
Vector space model
queries and documents as vectors in term
space
Probabilistic model
a probabilistic approach
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Text Indexing
A document is represented by a set of
index terms that summarize document
contents
adjectives, adverbs, connectives are less
useful
mainly nouns (lexicon look-up)
requires text pre-processing (off-line)
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Indexing
index
Data Repository
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Text Preprocessing
Extract index terms from text
Processing stages
word separation, sentence splitting
change terms to a standard form (e.g.,
lowercase)
eliminate stop-words (e.g. and, is, the, …)
reduce terms to their base form (e.g.,
eliminate prefixes, suffixes)
construct mapping between terms and
documents (indexing)
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Text Preprocessing Chart
from Baeza – Yates & Ribeiro – Neto, 1999
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Text Indexing Methods
Main indexing methods:
inverted files
signature files
bitmaps
Size of index
may exceed size of actual collection
compress index to reduce storage
typically 40% of size of collection
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Inverted Files
Dictionary: terms stored alphabetically
Posting list: pointers to documents
containing the term
Posting info: document id, frequency of
occurrence, location in document, etc.
dictionary indexed by B-trees, tries or
binary searched
Pros: fast and easy to implement
Cons: large space overhead (up to 300%)
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Inverted Index
index
άγαλμα
αγάπη
…
δουλειά
…
πρωί
…
ωκεανός
E.G.M Petrakis
posting list
(1,2)(3,4)
(4,3)(7,5)
………
(10,3)
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
documents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
44
Query Processing
1. Parse query and extract query terms
2. Dictionary lookup
 binary search
3. Get postings from inverted file
 one term at a time
4. Accumulate postings
 record matching document ids, frequencies, etc.
 compute weights
5. Rank answers by weights (e.g., frequencies)
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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Signature Files
A filter for eliminating most of the nonqualifying documents
signature: short hash-coded representation
of document or query
the signatures are stored and searched
sequentially
search returns all qualifying documents plus
some false alarms
the answer is searched to eliminate false
alarms
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
46
Retrieval
Superimposed Coding
Each word yields a bit pattern of size F with m
bits set to 1 and the rest left as 0
size of F affects the false drop rate
bit patterns are OR-ed to form the doc signature
find documents having 1 in the same bits as the
query
E.G.M Petrakis
word
signature
data
001 000 110 010
base
000 010 101 001
document signature
001 010 111 011
Multimedia Information
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Bitmaps
For every term, a bit vector is stored
each bit corresponds to a document
set to 1 if term appears in document, 0
otherwise
e.g., “word”  10100: the “word” appears in
documents 1 and 3 in a collection of 5
documents
Very efficient for Boolean queries
retrieve bit-vectors for each query term
E.G.Mcombine
Petrakis
Multimedia Information
bit vectors
with Boolean operators48
Retrieval
Comparison of Text Indexing
Methods
Bitmaps:
 pros: intuitive, easy to implement and to process
 cons: space overhead
Signature files:
 pros: easy to implement, compact index, no lexicon
 cons: many unnecessary accesses to documents
Inverted files:
 pros: used by most search engines
 cons: large space overhead, index can be
compressed
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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References
 “Searching Multimedia Databases by Content”, C.
Faloutsos, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996
 “Modern Information Retrieval”, R. Baeza-Yates, B.
Ribeiro-Neto, Addison Wesley, 1999
 “Automatic Text Processing”, Gerard Salton, Addison
Wesley, 1989
 Information Retrieval Links:
http://www-a2k.is.tokushima-u.ac.jp/member/kita/NLP/IR.html
E.G.M Petrakis
Multimedia Information
Retrieval
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