ABSTRACT
The equivalent of a free text search for an image database would be to find all images or video sequences containing a particular object by analysing the digital images themselves to establish if the object is present. This might be possible and straightforward if a high level symbolic description of the image is available, but necessitates substantial processing if only unprocessed raster images are held. Many unsolved problems in image understanding need to be solved before general solutions to such retrieval problems can be conceived.
