Clustering results of image searches by annotations and visual features

• The previous studies adopted the respective feature for images search.
• Our method is based on both semantic meaning and visual pattern.
• Particularly, we use the trail of browsing information to extract the semantic meaning.
• The experiment shows our method is precise and efficient.

Image on web has become one of the most important information for browsers; however, the large number of results retrieved from images search engine increases the difficulty in finding the intended images. Image search result clustering (ISRC) is a solution to this problem. Currently, the ISRC-based methods separately utilized textual and visual features to present clustering result. In this paper, we proposed a new ISRC method as called Incremental-Annotations-based image search with clustering (IAISC), which adopted annotation as textual features and category model as visual features. IAISC can provide clustering result based on the semantic meaning and visual trail; further, presented by the iteratively structure, a user can obtain the intended image easily. The experimental result shows our method has high precision that the average precision rate is 73.4%; particularly, the precision rate is 96.5% when the user drills down the intended images till the last round. Regarding efficiency, our system is one and a half times as efficient as the previous studies.