An Image Consulting Framework for document analysis of Internet graphics

A new system approach for image understanding, called the Image Consulting Framework, is proposed. It allows for the validation of image properties. The kinds of image properties considered are textual, textural, hierarchical, color and symbolic. Its main application field is information filtering from images used in World Wide Web documents. The Image Consulting Framework consists of four stages: the color separation stage, the information granulation-verification modules (GVMs), the task stage and the recognition stage. At the base of the framework are the GVMs, which are designed to solve very special tasks. They consists of three parts: a method maintainer, a parameter chooser and a tester (verifier). The parameter chooser uses a given set of parameter settings for different runs of the maintained method on the input images of the GVM. The resulting images are tested for the occurrence of the property for which the GVM is designed. All successful images are put into a queue. The task stage calls new GVMs due to the filling of the queue, and it also assigns input images to the GVMs. All fully-treated images are passed to the recognition stage, where the information extraction is performed