NEC's AMORE simplifies digital visual media searches

Using a new content-oriented search and retrieval system, art enthusiasts will be able to search the archives of the Getty Information Institute and its local, national and international project partners.

The Getty Institute is customizing AMORE, NEC's new search and retrieval tool for images, to search for and retrieve digitized images of works of art, monuments and other artifacts on the Web. The ARTHUR (ART media and text HUb and Retrieval) system. Using AMORE's text retrieval capabilities Getty will assign to digitized images specify keywords from the Art & Architecture Thesaurus, the Union List of Artist Names and the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names.

AMORE uses a Web crawler to gather user-specified images from the Internet, e.g. stock photos, art museum exhibits, law enforcement mug shot databases, or retail or parts catalogues. A content-oriented image retrieval (COIR) function indexes the images according to various attributes, such as color, shape, and texture. It also assigns keywords to retrieved images so users can perform keyword-specific searches.

AMORE addresses the problems of information overload and Internet search woes, according to Kojiro Watanabe, senior VP and GM of NEC USA's C&C Research Laboratories. By going "beyond the traditional text and numeric searching," he said, AMORE "can deliver relevant information quickly... [taking] the next step in providing perceptive, defined and rapid access to information on the Internet."

AMORE currently runs on UNIX with future versions planned for Windows NT