| This thesis presents the 3C (content, context, and common-background) knowledge integration architecture, which provides the underlying framework for a new paradigm of multimedia information access. This paradigm, named the “Holistic” information access paradigm, is context-sensitive, concept-based, and proactive. The approach is “Context-sensitive” in the sense that it incorporates the characteristics of the information seeker as well as his/her intended use for the sought information. Common (domain) knowledge documents are used to characterize the seeker as well as the information task and are represented as domain based ontologies.; It is “Concept-based” as the user interacts with the system through an ontology of concepts instead of a vocabulary of words/phrases. The approach is also “Proactive” in the sense that it incorporates retrieval and classification in advance, based on background domain knowledge documents designated by the information seeker. Content knowledge is obtained via audio-visual analyzers such as object detectors and feature extraction modules. Context knowledge is extracted through shallow and deep text mining methods. These components are integrated via an XML-based standard knowledge representation scheme XML Topic Maps (XTM). |
