Improving the Precision of Image Search Engines with the Psychological Intention Diagram

Abstract

With the increase in the amount of images online, the whole Internet is becoming an image database. Since there are so many available images, it is difficult for users to find the desired images. Unlike text search engines, image search engines cannot fully recognize the visual meaning of an image. In addition, it is difficult to obtain the desired images from the keywords provided by the user, since a keyword may contain multiple meanings. To solve these problems, this paper proposes a psychological intention diagram of past users, if inquiring using a keyword, to predict the images that these users want. Based upon the novel psychological diagram, this paper proposes a search engine that analyzes images in the sequential probing of the current user if he/she inquires after the same keywords as previous users. Moreover, this paper also constructs a psychological intention diagram of the designers of the web pages containing the keyword. This type of psychological intention diagram is used when a query is not issued by past users. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first one considering the psychological viewpoint of users and web designers in guiding the retrieval of the search engine. The experimental results show that the proposed image search engine has high precision; therefore, the method of providing images can help users to find their desired image more easily.