The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jun. 11, 2002
Filed:
Mar. 25, 1999
Sony Corporation, Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
An image retrieval method and an image retrieval apparatus are disclosed in which it is possible to identify in which image-information recording medium or in which group an image to be retrieved is included. The image retrieval apparatus has a recording controller for recording image information on a disk drive or a hard disk drive. A reduction/expansion controller generates an index picture of a predetermined group of the image information. A retrieval-information storage unit generates index picture IDs, medium IDs, and folder IDs while correlating the above different types of IDs with each other, and stores the IDs together with the index pictures. With this arrangement, a desired item of image information is retrieved by using the index pictures, the index picture IDs, the medium IDs, and the folder IDs. It is thus possible to obtain a target image by sequentially checking the index picture visually.