CBIR 2021 : Content-Based Image Retrieval

International Workshop on Content-Based Image Retrieval:

where have we been, and where are we going

The workshop will be held in conjunction with ICPR 2020 (25th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Milan, Italy, 10-15 January 2021).

=== WORKSHOP AIM AND SCOPE ===

Twenty years ago, in the last year of the XX century, the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence published the paper “Content-based image retrieval at the end of the early years”, by A. Smeulders et al. (IEEE TPAMI, 22(12):1349–80, 2000), a much cited review that collected and analysed the work on Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) in the 1990’s and point out possible directions of research for the (then) foreseeable future.

Much of that future is now in the past, and many things have changed since then both in technology, in our cultures, and in our societies. Twenty years is a sizable chunk in the life of a person, a significant amount of time in any modern culture, and a very long time in the life of contemporary technology. In this workshop we want to take a look at CBIR twenty years after the “early years” and try to see what the mature years will look like. We shall try to succeed in the tough endeavour of looking at the past and the future at the same time, of analysing the past—its successes and its failures—to get guidance for the future.

We are interested in any new methods, applications, insights related to Contend-Base Image Retrieval. In particular we welcome the following types of articles:

REVIEWS: a look at the directions of research in CBIR that have emerged in the last 20 years, their successes and their failures, and what they can teach us for the future; applications: what applications have emerged that nobody would have thought of 20 years ago; what applications which were foreseen 20 years ago have been successful and which have not, and what can this teach us about the predictions for the future that we are doing now;

CRITICAL: has the impact of CBIR always been positive? A look at what we have lost and gained in terms of privacy, cultural diversity, and human relations. Each new technology changes the social environment in which it is inserted much beyond its immediate impact. Have we, as a community, failed to see these changes? Do we have a social responsibility of trying to predict the social effect of our technology, or does the ethos of science as pure pursuit of knowledge apply to us?

FORECAST: a look at where is the field going and what promising new directions of research are being explored; a look at what is being done in other fields (from mathematics to philosophy) that might impact CBIR in the future.