Spherical Visualization of Image Data with Clustering

This paper proposes to aid the search for images by visualization of the image data on a spherical surface. Many photographs were lost in the Tohoku tsunami, and those that were eventually found are now being scanned. However, the owners of the lost photographs are finding it difficult to search for their images within a large set of scanned images that contain no additional information. In this paper, we apply a spatial clustering technique called the Associated Keyword Space (ASKS) projected from a three-dimensional (3D) sphere to a two-dimensional (2D) spherical surface for 2D visualization. ASKS supports clustering, and therefore, we construct an image search system in which similar images are clustered. In this system, similar images are identified by color inspection and by having similar characteristics. In this way, the system is able to support the search for images from within a huge number of images.