We describe a prototype intelligent information retrieval system that uses natural-language understanding to efficiently locate captioned data. Multimedia data generally require captions to explain their features and significance. Such descriptive captions often rely on long nominal compounds (strings of consecutive nouns) which create problems of disambiguating word sense. In our system, captions and user queries are parsed and interpreted to produce a logical form, using a detailed theory of the meaning of nominal compounds. A fine-grain match can then compare the logical form of the query to the logical forms for each caption. To improve system efficiency, we first perform a coarse-grain match with index files, using nouns and verbs extracted from the query. Our experiments with randomly selected queries and captions from an existing image library show an increase of 30% in precision and 50% in recall over the keyphrase approach currently used. Our processing times have a median of seven seconds as compared to eight minutes for the existing system, and our system is much easier to use.
This paper briefly describes the current implementation status of an intelligent information retrieval system, MARIE, that employs natural language processing techniques. Descriptive captions are used to identify photographic images concerning various military projects. The captions are parsed to produce a logical form from which nouns and verbs are extracted to form the primary keywords. User queries are also specified in natural language. A two-phase search process employing coarse-grain and fine-grain match processes is used to find the captions that best match the query. A type hierarchy based on object-oriented programming constructs is used to represent the semantic knowledge base. This knowledge base contains knowledge of various military concepts and terminology with specifics from the Naval Weapons Center. Methods are used for creating the logical form during semantic analysis, generating the keywords to be used in the coarse-grain match process, and fine-grain matching between query and caption logical forms.
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