Searching for A Thing

For humans, one picture usually suffices to identify an object of search. I am looking for this little girl, have you seen her? or Do you have such another one? are two ways to specify a target even to someone who has never seen the object of search before. Searching from one example in digital multimedia retrieval is a hard problem. From the one example one needs to derive an accurate estimate of all accidental variations in the target picture as well as the structural variation of the target in all other potential pictures. From the one example one needs to derive an accurate estimate of all accidental variations the target instance might have.