@techreport{TR-IC-05-21,
  number = {IC-05-21},
  author = {Ricardo da S. Torres and Alexandre X. Falcão and
            Marcos André Gonçalves and 
            Baoping Zhang and Weiguo Fan and Edward A. Fox},
  title = {A New Framework to Combine Descriptors for
           Content-based Image Retrieval},
  month = {September},
  year = {2005}, 
  institution = {Institute of Computing, University of Campinas},
  note = {In English, 15 pages.
    \par\selectlanguage{english}\textbf{Abstract}
       Methods that combine image database descriptors have strong
       influence on the effectiveness of content-based image retrieval
       (CBIR) systems. Although there are many combination functions
       described in the image processing literature, empirical
       evaluation studies have shown that those functions do not
       perform consistently well across different contexts (queries,
       image collections, users). Moreover, it is often very difficult
       for human beings to identify optimal combination functions for
       a particular application. In this paper, we propose a novel
       framework using {\em Genetic Programming} to combine image
       database descriptors for CBIR. Our framework is validated
       through several experiments involving two image databases and a
       specific domain, where the images are retrieved based on the
       shape of their objects.
  }
}