Rapid development of digital imaging technology has created a flood of images being collected, sorted, searched and shared over the Internet. This in turn has led to the acceleration of research in systems for content-based image management. Such systems necessarily rely on computer vision and image processing for the extraction of image descriptors, the detection of objects and faces, image similarity measures, classification algorithms, etc. While many methods have been proposed, progress is being stifled by insufficient access to `real' image collections for testing and a lack of practical tools for evaluation. At the moment, tools for object/scene detection, visual search, and database navigation are being evaluated on small (somewhat arbitrary) collections of images, and if at all, using a very small number of users.
This proposal seeks funding to develop a resource for the computer vision and image processing communities consisting of a public web-based photo collection. To a public user, it will be presented as a state-of-the-art online system for organizing, searching and sharing personal photos. It's true purpose will be for researchers, however, to whom it will provide a large `real' database of images for testing, and a large pool of unbiased users for evaluation. By exploiting the blossoming public demand for web-based image services, this resource will provide the ability to develop and evaluate individual components of content-based image management systems at an unprecedented scale.
In addition to providing this research resource, the proposed system will enable unique educational experiences for students in computer science and engineering. For this purpose, the system will include a secondary `online laboratory' that is accessible from the principal website and allows consenting public users to try experimental services. This `online laboratory' will give students the ability to implement and test their projects---not only in the areas of computer vision and image processing, but in areas such as peer-to-peer systems, distributed computing, programming languages, security and privacy, and interface design.
Progress reports for this project will be regularly updated at www.eecs.harvard.edu/~zickler.
