Semantic search via concept annealing
Kirk A. Dunkelberger · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2007
Annealing, in metallurgy and materials science, is a heat treatment wherein the microstructure of a material is altered, causing changes in its properties such as strength and hardness. We define concept annealing as a lexical, syntactic, and semantic expansion capability (the removal of defects and the internal stresses that cause term- and phrase-based search failure) coupled with a directed contraction capability (semantically-related terms, queries, and concepts nucleate and grow to replace those originally deformed by internal stresses). These two capabilities are tied together in a control loop mediated by the information retrieval precision and recall metrics coupled with intuition provided by the operator. The specific representations developed have been targeted at facilitating highly efficient and effective semantic indexing and searching. This new generation of Find capability enables additional processing (i.e. all-source tracking, relationship extraction, and total system resource management) at rates, precisions, and accuracies previously considered infeasible. In a recent experiment, an order magnitude reduction in time to actionable intelligence and nearly three orderss magnitude reduction in false alarm rate was achieved.