MONITORING AND ANALYZING CREATION AND USAGE OF VISUAL CONTENT

• US 20090063431A1
• Filed: 11/05/2008
• Published: 03/05/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 07/31/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Original Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Inventors: Hull, Jonathan J., Erol, Berna
• Granted Patent: US 8,489,987 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24 Querying
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/583 using metadata automatically derived from the content
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/955 using information identifiers, e.g. uniform resource locators [URL]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 18/256 of results relating to different input data, e.g. multimodal recognition
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/811 the classifiers operating on different input data, e.g. multi-modal recognition
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/95 structured as a network, e.g. client-server architectures
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/993 Evaluation of the quality of the acquired pattern
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/142 using hand-held instruments; Constructional details of the instruments
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/414 Extracting the geometrical structure, e.g. layout tree; Block segmentation, e.g. bounding boxes for graphics or text

Abstract

An MMR system includes an analytics module for monitoring and analyzing the creation and usage of visual content search. The analytics module is part of a MMR gateway and provides a mechanism for administrators to determine the usage patterns and other information about users of the MMR system. This information is fed back to other components of the MMR system to improve its operation. The analytics module comprises a monitoring module, a usage database, an access analysis module and a presentation module. The monitoring module is coupled to other components of the MMR gateway and collects information about retrieval request, image queries, context information and recognition results. The usage database stores the information collected by the monitoring module. The access analysis module performs queries on the usage database and analyzes the results. The output of the access analysis module is provided to the presentation module for presentation or output to other systems and users.

Claims

1. A device for monitoring and analyzing access to visual content search/retrieval system, the device comprising:

a monitoring module having an input and an output for receiving and capturing access information related to accessing of the visual content search/retrieval system;

the monitoring module providing the access information on the output;

a storage device for storing the access information, the storage device coupled to the output of the monitoring module;

an analysis module having an input and an output for retrieving access information from the storage device and producing an analysis result, the input of the analysis module coupled to storage device; and

a presentation module for outputting the analysis result or outputting an action based on the analysis result.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the access information is information about usage of the visual content search/retrieval system including retrieval requests and recognition results.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the access to visual content is information about creation in the visual content search/retrieval system including indexing, hotspot data addition and association.

4. The system of claim 1 wherein the storage device is a relational database.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein analysis module produces an analysis result by correlating and comparing access information.

6. The system of claim 1 further comprising a content detection module coupled to receive the access information, the content detection module detecting content within the access information and generating metadata, the content detection module coupled to provide the metadata to the monitoring module.

7. The system of claim 1 wherein the access information includes query information, user information, context information, interaction information retrieval results, and hotspot results and the monitoring module is coupled a server, a dispatcher and a hotspot database to receive the access information.

8. The system of claim 1 wherein the access information includes received images, received metadata, hotspot data, indexing results and hotspot association information, and the monitoring module is coupled an MMR publisher an indexing unit and a hotspot database to receive the access information.

9. The system of claim 1 wherein the analysis module performs correlation of types of data in the access information.

10. The system of claim 1 wherein the presentation module combines the analysis results with one from the group of a recognition result image and map image.

12. The method of claim 10 wherein monitoring for access of the visual content search/retrieval system comprises monitoring for a retrieval request received and processed by a MMR gateway.

13. The method of claim 10 wherein monitoring for access of the visual content search/retrieval system comprises monitoring for a request to index a new image and/or associate a hotspot with an indexed image.

14. The method of claim 10 wherein analyzing the access information includes determining how retrieval performance affects user behavior.

15. The method of claim 10 wherein analyzing the access information includes determining a location and direction the user is traveling.

16. The method of claim 10 wherein analyzing the access information includes determining a precise location on a document that is present to and viewed by the user.

17. The method of claim 10 wherein analyzing the access information includes performing correlation of types of data in the access information.

18. The method of claim 10 wherein outputting the analysis results includes initiating a secondary action based on the analysis results.

19. The method of claim 10 wherein outputting includes generating a report including analysis results.

20. The method of claim 19 wherein the report including analysis results overlaid on an image or a map.

21. The method of claim 10 wherein outputting includes controlling processing parameters of the visual content search/retrieval system using the analysis results including one from the group modifying a recognition algorithm, an algorithm parameter, an indexing algorithm, a prediction module, a MMR matching unit, an acquisition unit, an image registration unit, dispatcher, recognition unit, content and structure of index tables, and user profiles stored in a MMR gateway 104.

11. A method for device for monitoring and analyzing access to visual content search/retrieval system, the method comprising:

monitoring for access of the visual content search/retrieval system and capturing access information;

storing the access information;

analyzing the access information to generate analysis results; and

outputting the analysis results.