Microsoft Research is curently working on a new Photo2Search technology that lets users search the Internet based on photos captured by cell user phone cameras.

Photo2Search works like this: Seeking information about something seen, a user takes a photo of the object and sends the photo, via e-mail or Multimedia Messaging Service, to a Web-based server, which searches an image database for matches. The server then delivers database information—whether it be a Web page featuring the object in the photo or information associated with the object—to the user, who can act on the information received: read a menu, enter a gallery, book a hotel room, make a purchase.

This image matching based on some well-known computer-vision algorithms that extract features from images. That choice proved productive, resulting in an efficient, high-dimensional index that can search through a large image database and return results quickly—combing through a collection of 6,000 images and delivering matches in a mere three seconds using a common laptop.


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