An image community detection method for hierarchical visualisation

Better ways of representing the results of image search can be found rather than regular lists of thumbnails. For this purpose, we propose a hierarchical visualisation scheme with two stages. We utilise the notion of image community and aim to detect communities within a large set of images by means of a novel deterministic community detection method. After image communities are detected, the representative key images of these communities are presented to the user in an intuitive and expressive layout. The layout is determined according to the detected community structure. As a result, the user is presented a distinctive set of images at the first stage. If similar images are desired, the members of the communities can be explored at the second stage. We experimentally show that the proposed community detection algorithm significantly outperforms generic community detection methods. Furthermore, we believe that the proposed hierarchical visualisation can be preferred by many of the users.