Interactive concept learning in image search

A computer-implemented process for searching for an image of desired image characteristics, comprising:

• obtaining a set of images;
• computing visual features for each of the set of images;
• selecting an example image, either a positive example image having features of a type of image being sought, or a negative example image not having features of the type of image being sought;
• learning a rule by computing a weighting of features of each of the set of images based on one or more example images provided to determine the most relevant of the images of the image set;
• and
• ranking the images of the image set according to the computed weighting.

A system for ranking images retrieved in response to an image search, comprising:

• a general purpose computing device;
• a computer program comprising program modules executable by the general purpose computing device, wherein the computing device is directed by the program modules of the computer program to,
• receive a set of images in response to an image search;
• specify examples of images with image characteristics sought to be found;
• extract features based on image characteristics of each of the set of images received in response to the image search and the specified example images;
• learn a rule based on the features of the image characteristics of the example images;
• weight the features of each of the images of the set of images;
• rank the images of the image set based on one or more learned rules;
• and
• display the ranked images of the image set to a user.