Method and system for concept summarization

• US 9,870,376 B2
• Filed: 04/01/2011
• Issued: 01/16/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 04/01/2011
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Excalibur IP, LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Inventors: Sanyal, Subhajit, Mahajan, Dhruv Kumar, Sellamanickam, Sundararajan
• Primary Examiner(s): Obisesan, Augustine K
• Application Number:
  US13/077,995
• Publication Number:
  US 20120254191A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,482 Days
• Field of Search: 707744
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/58 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually

Abstract

A method and a system for summarizing a concept are provided. A query corresponding to a concept is received from a user. A plurality of images and corresponding descriptive information may be collected based on the query. The plurality of images and the descriptive information may be processed to form feature vectors and processed descriptive information respectively. Further, one or more topics may be identified for the plurality of images. Each of the plurality of images may be assigned with one or more topic distribution values corresponding to the one or more topics. The one or more topics correspond to the processed descriptive information. A sparse set of images may be determined based on the feature vectors and the assigned topic distribution values, to summarize the concept. Also, a target summary may be built from the summarized concept, by regularizing one or more distribution constraints.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for summarizing a concept, the method comprising:

receiving, from a user, a query corresponding to the concept;

identifying a source based on the query;

collecting, from the source, a plurality of images along with descriptive information corresponding thereto;

forming feature vectors with processed descriptive information by processing the plurality of images and the descriptive information;

assigning each of the plurality of images with one or more topic distribution values corresponding to one or more topics, the one or more topics corresponding to the feature vectors with the processed descriptive information;

receiving, from the user, a summary size that represents a number of images to be a size of a sparse set of images;

determining the sparse set of images from the plurality of images to summarize the concept, wherein a size of the sparse set of images is the summary size and the sparse set of images being determined based on the feature vectors and the assigned topic distribution values, wherein the sparse set of images is limited to the summary size; and

regularizing one or more distribution constraints for building a target summary from the summarized concept, the one or more distribution constraints being regularized by utilizing a regularization term to minimize divergence between the summarized concept and the target summary, wherein the regularization term is received from the user;

providing the sparse set of images to the user responsive to the query from the user.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

identifying an adapter from a plurality of adapters depending on the identified source, wherein the plurality of adapters each correspond to a different source.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising identifying the one or more topics for the plurality of images based on the processed descriptive information.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising determining the one or more topic distribution values of the one or more topics corresponding to each image, each of the topic distribution values comprising probability value for assigning the corresponding topic to an image of the plurality of images.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the sparse set of images is determined by defining a sparse kernel classifier.

6. A computer program product stored on a non-transitory computer-readable medium that when executed by a processor, performs a method for summarizing a concept, the method comprising:

receiving, from a user, a query corresponding to the concept;

collecting a plurality of images along with descriptive information corresponding thereto, the plurality of images being collected from a source corresponding to the query;

processing the plurality of images and the descriptive information to form feature vectors and processed descriptive information respectively, each of the plurality of images corresponding to one of the feature vectors;

assigning each of the plurality of images with one or more topic distribution values corresponding to one or more topics, the one or more topics corresponding to the processed descriptive information;

receiving, from the user, an input that includes a summary size that represents a number of images for the summarizing;

determining a sparse set of images from the plurality of images to summarize the concept, the sparse set of images being determined based on the feature vectors and the assigned topic distribution values, wherein a size of the sparse set of images is limited to the summary size;

regularizing one or more distribution constraints for building a target summary from the summarized concept by receiving constraints from the user that are used by the summarizing module when determining the sparse set of images, wherein the input received from the user includes the constraints; and

providing the sparse set of images responsive to the query.

7. The computer program product of claim 6, wherein the plurality of images and the corresponding descriptive information are collected from the source corresponding to the concept.

8. The computer program product of claim 6, further comprising determining the one or more topic distribution values of the one or more topics corresponding to each image, each of the topic distribution values comprising probability value for assigning a corresponding topic to an image of the plurality of images.

9. The computer program product of claim 6, wherein the sparse set of images is determined based on a summarization size.

10. The computer program product of claim 6, further comprising providing the target summary to the user.

11. A system for summarizing a concept, the system comprising a processor and a memory for:

receiving a query from a user, wherein the query is corresponding to the concept;

collecting a plurality of images and descriptive information corresponding to each of the plurality of images from a source, the source being identified based on the query, wherein the plurality of images correspond to the query;

converting the plurality of images into corresponding feature vectors, processing the descriptive information corresponding to each image of the plurality of images;

identifying one or more topics for the plurality of images based on the processed descriptive information;

assigning one or more topic distribution values corresponding to the one or more topics to each image of the plurality of images;

determining a sparse set of images from the plurality of images to summarize the concept, the sparse set of images being determined based on the corresponding feature vectors and the assigned topic distribution values, wherein the summary of the concept produced by the summarizing module is related to a summary size representing a number of images in the sparse set of images, and further wherein the summary size is input received from the user;

regularizing one or more distribution constraints for the summarizing module to build a target summary from the summarized concept, the one or more distribution constraints being regularized by utilizing a regularization term to minimize divergence between the summarized concept and the target summary, wherein the regularization term is received as part of the input from the user; and

providing the sparse set of images responsive to the query.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the receiving further receives the source for collecting the plurality of images.

13. The system of claim 11, further comprising extracting the descriptive information for each of the plurality of images depending on the source identified based on the query.

14. The system of claim 11, further comprising storing, with a database, the processed descriptive information.

15. The system of claim 11, further comprising identifying the one or more topics by performing a latent semantic analysis of the processed descriptive information.

16. The system of claim 11, further comprising determining the one or more topic distribution values of the one or more topics corresponding to each image, each of the topic distribution values comprising probability value for assigning a corresponding topic to an image of the plurality of images.

17. The system of claim 11, wherein the sparse set of images is determined based on the summarization size.