Abstract

Developing good methods for image description and indexing is fundamental for successful image retrieval, regardless of the content of images. Researchers and practitioners in the field of image indexing have developed a variety of image indexing systems and methods with the consideration of information types delivered by images. Such efforts in developing image indexing systems and methods include Panofsky''''s levels of image indexing and indexing systems adopting different approaches such as thesauri-based approach, classification approach. description element-based approach, and categorization approach. This study investigated users'''' perception of the objectiveness of image indexing, especially the iconographical analysis of image information advocated by Panofsky. One of the best examples of subjectiveness and conditional-dependence of image information is emotion. As a result, this study dealt with visual emotional information. Experiments were conducted in two phases : one was to measure the degree of agreement or disagreement about the emotional content of pictures among forty-eight participants and the other was to examine the inter-rater consistency defined as the degree of users'''' agreement on indexing. The results showed that the experiment participants made fairly subjective interpretation when they were viewing pictures. It was also found that the subjective interpretation made by the participants resulted from the individual differences in terms of their educational or cultural background. The study results emphasize the importance of developing new ways of indexing and/or searching for images, which can alleviate the limitations of access to images due to the subjective interpretation made by different users.