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:
Nov. 12, 2002
Filed:
Nov. 03, 1998
Wen-Syan Li, Fremont, CA (US);
NEC USA, Inc., Princeton, NJ (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for efficient query expansion using reduced size indices and for progressive query processing. Queries are expanded conceptually, using semantically similar and syntactically related words to those specified by the user in the query to reduce the chances of missing relevant documents. The notion of a multi-granularity information and processing structure is used to support efficient query expansion, which involves an indexing phase, a query processing and a ranking phase. In the indexing phase, semantically similar words are grouped into a concept which results in a substantial index size reduction due to the coarser granularity of semantic concepts. During query processing, the words in a query are mapped into their corresponding semantic concepts and syntactic extensions, resulting in a logical expansion of the original query. Additionally, the processing overhead is avoided. The initial query words can then be used to rank the documents in the answer set on the basis of exact, semantic and syntactic matches and also to perform progressive query processing.