Results of the Industry-Research co-operation on Multimedia Analysis and Annotation


Chosen Use Case: Automated Semantic Multimedia Annotation
KW Partners: CERTH
IB Member: Motorola

Progress
Semantic Web technologies have been successfully employed for the representation of both media-related and domain-specific knowledge, including contextual knowledge, in a multimedia analysis and annotation system. This work is part of the EU project aceMedia, see http://www.acemedia.org
The aceMedia use case addresses semantic analysis, annotation and retrieval of multimedia content. It uses ontologies for the representation of domain specific and media related information, contextual knowledge representation, logic-based reasoning for the integration of content annotations and the extraction of implicit knowledge, and a customized approach for representing and reasoning under uncertainty.

Evaluation

The aceMedia use case encompasses a variety of industry requirements with respect to multimedia content annotation, analysis and management. The implemented algorithms and demos have demonstrated the applicability of Semantic Web technologies towards a uniform representation formalism that facilitates modules’ interaction and information exchange, the potential of fuzzy extensions to partially meeting the ambiguity in multimedia, and a formal representation of contextual knowledge.
Results

The aceMedia project constitutes a pragmatic demonstration of Semantic Web technologies application in multimedia content analysis and annotation. Although not providing a complete solution, the implemented demo versions show the value and further potential. At the same time, the experiences gained, form valuable lessons for future directions.
In order to be industry ready, it requires a complete, robust solution, whose formalization would ensure the generality of application and its extensibility. As an important part of the research relates to the expressiveness of current Semantic Web languages and corresponding tools support, porting the aceMedia approach directly to industry strongly interrelates with the respective Semantic Web advances.



Available results include:



References
G. Stoilos, G. Stamou, V. Tzouvaras, J.Z. Pan, I. Horrocks, A Fuzzy Description Logic for Multimedia Knowledge Representation, Proc. of the International Workshop on Multimedia and the Semantic Web.
K. Petridis, S. Bloehdorn, C. Saathoff, N. Simou, S. Dasiopoulou, V. Tzouvaras, S. Handschuh, Y. Avrithis, I. Kompatsiaris and S. Staab: Knowledge Representation and Semantic Annotation of Multimedia Content, IEEE Proceedings on Vision Image and Signal Processing, Special issue on Knowledge-Based Digital Media Processing, Vol. 153, No. 3, pp. 255-262, June 2006.
S.Dasiopoulou, C. Saathoof, Ph. Mylonas, Y. Avrithis, Y. Kompatsiaris, and S. Staab, Introducing Context and Reasoning in Visual Content Analysis: An Ontology-based Framework, in Semantic Multimedia and Ontologies: Theories and Applications, Paola Hobson, Ioannis Kompatsiaris (Editors), Springer-Verlag, 2007, to appear.


For more information about this Industry-Research co-operation please contact Dr Lyndon Nixon, Knowledge Web Industry Area co-manager nixon@inf.fu-berlin.de