David Steele

Query by image and video content: the QBIC system

Research on ways to extend and improve query methods for image databases is widespread. We have developed the QBIC (Query by Image Content) system to explore content-based retrieval methods. QBIC allows queries on large image and video databases based on example images, user-constructed sketches and drawings, selected color and texture patterns, camera and object motion, and other graphical information. Two key properties of QBIC are (1) its use of image and video content-computable properties of color, texture, shape and motion of images, videos and their objects-in the queries, and (2) its graphical query language, in which queries are posed by drawing, selecting and other graphical means. This article describes the QBIC system and demonstrates its query capabilities. QBIC technology is part of several IBM products. >

Unsupervised image segmentation using the minimum description length principle

Considers the problem of unsupervised multiband image segmentation specifically, using the MDL criterion, an associated complexity measure. According to the MDL principle, the best estimates are those that result in the most compact encoding of the image. An important advantage of such an approach is that it is virtually free of the need to choose arbitrary thresholds, which are typical of many segmentation techniques, and which, in many cases, need to be interactively adjusted in order to get satisfactory results.<<ETX>>

Algorithms for automatic disk head/slider inspection

This paper describes algorithms for automatically inspecting the air-bearing surface (ABS) of disk sliders (heads) for certain types of defects that are global or systematic in the sense that, when they occur, they occur on every slider in a row or, in some cases, on every slider in the entire carrier. These defects are: wrong part, missing rail, geometry error, missing taper, extra taper, misplaced taper, missing poletip and misplaced pole-tip. The inspection system is in production use and has resulted in a significant improvement of the quality of shipped sliders. Here, the associated image-analysis algorithms are described in detail.