Consistency in visual information systems

Many information systems contain both image and non-image data types. While the representation of visual information in non-visual forms and its use in retrieving visual information is being studied by many researchers, little attention has been paid to the consistency of information systems which contain visual information. The paper looks at a possible definition of consistency in terms of the reproducible output of (manual or automatic) operations on images, and discusses how this consistency could be maintained. An example system involving a relational database and an image store is given