This site received a 4 star rating from McKinley Group's editorial team.

QBIC(TM) -- IBM's Query By Image Content

On-line collections of images are growing larger and more common, and tools are needed to efficiently manage, organize, and navigate through them. We have developed a system called QBIC which allows queries of large image databases based on visual image content -- properties such as color percentages, color layout, and textures occurring in the images. Such queries use the visual properties of images, so you can match colors, textures and their positions without describing them in words. But, for example, a query using a red car on a green background will match a red bird on a similar green background. So we often combine content based queries with keyword and text predicates to get powerful retrieval methods for image and multimedia databases.

| QBIC is available for download with a free 90 day trial license. The download package includes the image indexing and search engine (for AIX, Linux, Windows NT/Windows95, and OS/2), a Web front end, APIs for imbedding QBIC in other applications or extending QBIC with new query functions, and even a sample image collection. You can download it from IBM software download site.

| Examples of sites using QBIC include:

For full use licenses, contact drewc@ibm.net. Also, check out QBIC's availability in the DB2 Image Extenders, which are components of IBM's scalable, multimedia, Web-enabled DB2 Universal Database.

To try the World Wide Web QBIC search engine on a set of approximately 1,900 images, called our "demo" catalog, press the "Run Demo" button below. Other catalogs may be available in the future. You need an HTML 3.0 capable browser.

Catalog name:

If you have any comments on this on-line demo, or would like to contact the QBIC group, write us at: qbicwww@almaden.ibm.com

If you would like to be on our mailing list, please enter your name in the following box and press Enter:

Your e-mail address:

Other links related to QBIC:

[ IBM home page | Order | Search | Contact IBM | Help | (C) | (TM) ]