Systems and Architectures for Multimedia Information Retrieval

In this paper, we provide a brief survey on multimedia information retrieval and we introduce some ideas investigated in the special issue. We hope that the contributions of this issue will stimulate the readers to tackle the current challenges and problems in this highly important research direction. Such contributions are the basis of tomorrow's multimedia information systems. Our aims are to clarify some notions raised by this new technology by reviewing its current capabilities and potential usefulness to users in various areas. The research and development issues cover a wide range of fields, many of which are shared with media processing, signal processing, database technologies, and data mining.