The Role of Context in Image Interpretation.
Dag Elgesem, Joan C. Nordbotten · 2007
Abstract. With the increasing availability and use of mobile phones with camera functionality, it becomes feasible to use these devices to query image databases for information. However, the resulting photo/image query commonly depicts several objects and can be open to a number of interpretations. This leads to ambiguities when determining the intention of an image used as the basis for an information retrieval query. We suggest that this problem is structurally similar to the problem of how to interpret an ambiguous sentence, and that the task can be modeled in a similar way. Though the role of context is a key factor in the solution of the problem of disambiguation of text, we argue that existing accounts of context do not explain what role context plays in image interpretation. In this paper, we propose a definition of image context and then show how the disambiguation of images as queries can be modeled as a game of partial information. On the basis of this, a more precise account of the role of context in image interpretation is proposed.