Region based information retrieval system

• US 8,650,195 B2
• Filed: 03/25/2011
• Issued: 02/11/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 03/26/2010
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Palle M. Pedersen
• Original Assignee: Palle M. Pedersen
• Inventors: Pedersen, Palle M
• Primary Examiner(s): MORRISON, JAY A
• Application Number:
  US13/072,647
• Publication Number:
  US 20110238664A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,054 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 707/737
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/334 Query execution G06F16/335 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 17/30675 Query execution G06F17/30699 takes precedence

Abstract

A region based information retrieval system improves on conventional information retrieval systems by breaking down documents into one or more region(s) and processing the additional information available at a region level of analysis. When looking at regions, it becomes possible to quickly distinguish between groups of related documents, quickly ignore or focus on certain information, track recent evolutions of documents, as well as understand the historical relationships, heritage, and versions of these documents. This is all possible whether or not the document publishers specify where the content originally came from.

Claims

1. A system for retrieving information from document collections comprising:

a document collection subsystem for managing documents in a document database;

a region finding, splitting and graphing subsystem for analyzing documents in the document database, establishing regions of these documents, where the region is less than the containing document and the bounds of each region is defined by the existence of at least one other identical or nearly identical region elsewhere in the document database, identifying region sets of such identical or nearly identical regions across documents, and storing these regions sets in a region set database;

an indexing subsystem for making the region sets searchable and storing the index information in a searchable index of region set database; and

a searching and ranking subsystem for finding region sets in the region set database using the searchable index of region sets based on an information request, creating a list of region set clusters of closely related region sets from the regions sets found, where the relations are based on the relationships in the region set graphs obtained from the region set graphs database, and communicating the search results.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the region finding, splitting and graphing subsystem further establishes region set graphs with relationships between the region sets, and stores these region set graphs in a region set graph database.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the searching and ranking subsystem further creates a list of documents from the document database which contains regions belonging to the region sets found and communicates these results.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the results contain the regions sets within each regions set cluster.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the regions sets within each regions set cluster are ranked based on the chronology of the region sets.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the results contain the documents from the document database which contains regions belonging to the region sets found.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the information request comprises a search text.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the information request comprises similarity to a document, image, video, or other content.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the relationship between region sets comprises content of the regions in one region set being a subset of content of regions in another region set.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the relationship between region sets comprises content of the regions in one region set partially overlapping with content of regions in another region set.

11. A method of organizing and retrieving information in documents collections comprising:

a document collection element for managing documents in a document database;

a region finding, splitting and graphing element for analyzing documents in the document database, establishing regions of these documents, where the region is less than the containing document and the bounds of each region is defined by the existence of at least one other identical or nearly identical region elsewhere in the document database, identifying region sets of such identical or nearly identical regions across documents, and storing these regions sets in a region set database;

an indexing element for making the region sets searchable and storing the index information in a searchable index of region set database; and

a searching and ranking element for finding region sets in the region set database using the searchable index of region sets based on an information request, creating a list of region set clusters of closely related region sets from the regions sets found, where the relations are based on the relationships in the region set graphs obtained from the region set graphs database, and communicating the search results.

12. The method of claim 11,

wherein the region finding, splitting and graphing element further establishes region set graphs with relationships between the region sets, and stores these region set graphs in a region set graph database.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein the relationship between these region sets are either one region set being a partial or full subset of the other region set or one region set containing a reference to or keywords of a document containing all or part of the other region set.

14. The method of claim 11, wherein an attempt is made to establish the strength of the relationship between the region sets.

15. The method of claim 11, wherein an attempt is made to establish the chronology of the region sets within region set clusters.

16. The method of claim 11, wherein the search results are ranked based on the relationships between the region sets.

17. The method of claim 11, wherein the search results are the documents partially or fully containing the identified sets of regions.

18. The method of claim 11, wherein the relationship between region sets comprises content of the regions in one region set partially overlapping with content of the regions in another region set.

19. The method of claim 11, wherein an attempt is made to establish the chronology of the documents within region set clusters.