Managing Uncertainties in Image Databases: A Fuzzy Approach

Issue Title: Special Issue: Selected Papers from MIS 2001 Workshop on Multimedia Information Systems In this paper we present a fuzzy approach for image databases. We exploit the concept of NF^sup 2^ relational model as a foundation for building image catalogues containing the semantic description of a given image database. New algebraic operators are defined in order to capture the fuzziness related to the semantic descriptors of an image. We compare our model to the First Normal Form annotated relation model, and show that in a number of interesting cases they can be considered equivalent, from the operational point of view, but in general NF^sup 2^ relational model is more powerful, and provides a more suitable framework for dealing with uncertainties in image databases.[PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]