GRIM DBMS: a graphical image database management system

Because of the diffusion of graphical editors in different application areas (e.g. business graphics, CAD, multimedia documents, etc.), graphical images are nowadays produced in large amounts. In this paper we address the problem of building a database system for graphical images (GRIM_DBMS), in which the images can be accessed by a partial description of the image content. The approach is based on a limited automatic analysis for images belonging to a domain described in advance to the system. The semantic objects, recognized in the graphical images during the analysis process, are interpreted according to the theory of evidence. The image query processing is based on special access structures generated from the image analysis process. An example demonstrates the main functions of the GRIM_DBMS in a specific application domain.