List of CBIR engines

Last updated

This is a list of publicly available content-based image retrieval (CBIR) engines. These image search engines look at the content (pixels) of images in order to return results that match a particular query.

Commercial CBIR search engines

NameDescriptionExternal Image QueryMetadata QueryIndex Size (Estimate, Millions of Images)Organization TypeLicense (Open/Closed)
Pixolution CBIR search engine, by pixolutionNoNo32MPrivate CompanyClosed
Picalike CBIR engine for Mobile and eCommerceNoNo (additional filters can be added)Private CompanyClosed
Elastic Vision Smart image searcher with content-based clustering in a visual network.NoNoPrivate CompanyClosed
Google Image Search Google's CBIR system with reverse image search YesYesPublic Company Google Custom Search API access
Yandex Image Search Yandex CBIR systemYesYes10000MPublic CompanyClosed
Baidu Image Search Baidu's CBIR systemYesYes1000MPublic CompanyClosed
ID My Pill Automatic prescription pill identification (CBIR)YesNoPrivate CompanyOpen (via API)
Imense Image Search Portal CBIR search engine, by Imense.NoYes3MPrivate CompanyClosed
Imprezzeo Image Search CBIR search engine, by Imprezzeo.NoYesPrivate CompanyClosed
Incogna Image Search CBIR search engine, by Incogna Inc.NoYes100MPrivate CompanyClosed
MiPai similarity search engine Online similarity search engineYesYes100MIndividualClosed
Piximilar Demo engine, developed by Idee Inc.NoNo3MPrivate CompanyClosed
Empora Product comparison & shopping using CBIR for product images. Previously known as PixstaNoYes0.5MPrivate CompanyClosed
Shopachu Shopping & fashion CBIR engine, by Incogna Inc.NoYes1MPrivate CompanyClosed
TinEye CBIR site for finding variations of web images, by Idee Inc.YesNo24200MPrivate CompanyOpen (via API)
PicScout CBIR service tracks image usage across the web.YesYes270MPrivate Company (Getty Images)Open (via API)
Galaxy CBIR engine for finding product/catalogue/video frames, by Odd Concepts Inc.YesYes35MPrivate CompanyClosed
eBay Image Search Image Search for eBay FashionNoYes20MPublic CompanyClosed
LykDat LykDat Fashion Search EngineYesNo13MPrivate CompanyClosed
IMMENSELAB CBIR search engine by KBKGROUP.YesNo10MPrivate CompanyClosed
Macroglossa Visual Search CBIR visual search engineYesNoPrivate CompanyClosed
NoClone PC image search engine and classification based on contentYes (a set)NoPrivate CompanyClosed
Querbie General purpose CBIR visual search engineYesYes20MPrivate CompanyClosed
Infringement.Report CBIR visual search engineYesYesPrivate CompanyOpen (via API)

CBIR research projects/demos/open source projects

NameDescriptionExternal Image QueryMetadata QueryIndex Size (Estimate, Millions of Images)Organization TypeLicense (Open/Closed)
akiwi akiwi is a semi-automatic image keywording tool using CBIR techniques. It was developed by HTW Berlin / pixolution GmbHYesYes15MUniversityClosed
ALIPR Developed by Penn State University researchersYesYesUniversityClosed
Anaktisi This Web-Solution implements a new family of CBIR descriptors. These descriptors combine in one histogram color and texture information and are suitable for accurately retrieving images.YesNo0.225MUniversityOpen
BRISC BRISC is a recursive acronym for BRISC Really IS Cool, and is (conveniently enough) also an anagram of Content-Based Image Retrieval System.YesNoUniversityGPL
digiKam Extensive photo management application build on top of KDE libraries. It provides, besides many other features, reverse searches for images in the local collection, detection of duplicates and a fuzzy search by drawings.YesYesDesktop-basedKDE GPL
Caliph & Emir Creation and Retrieval of images based on MPEG-7.YesNoDesktop-basedUniversity GPL
FIRE Open source query by visual example CBIR system. Developed at RWTH Aachen University. FIRE is a research system developed with extensibility in mind and can easily be combined with textual information retrieval systems.NoNoUniversityOpen
GNU Image Finding Tool Query by example image search system.YesNoDesktop-basedGNU GPL
ISSBP Similar Image Search by Imense plugin for Adobe Bridge, free beta.YesYesfree-beta limited to 4k imagesPrivate CompanyClosed
img(Rummager) Image retrieval Engine (Freeware Application).YesNoDesktop-basedIndividualClosed
imgSeek photo collection manager and viewer with content-based search and many other features.YesNoIndividual GPL
IKONA Generic CBIR system - INRIA - IMEDIAYesYesUniversityClosed
IOSB Image retrieval demonstration software of Fraunhofer IOSB (Germany)YesNoDesktop-basedResearch InstituteClosed
LIRE Java GPL library for content based image retrieval based on Lucene including multiple low level global and local features and different indexing strategies including bag of visual words and hashing.YesYesUniversityGPL
Lucignolo Image similarity search engine using only the native full-text search engine Lucene.YesYes106MResearch InstituteClosed
Luigi Large Histopathological Image Retrieval System developed at University of TokyoYesNo0.3MUniversityClosed
MIFile Image similarity search engine based on MI File (Metric Inverted File) developed at ISTI-CNR. Source code of the MI File.NoNo100MResearch InstituteOpen
MUVIS CBIR System at TUT- Tampere University of Technology.YesNoDesktop-basedUniversityClosed
Pastec [ usurped ]C++ LGPL index and search engine for near-duplicate image retrieval that uses bag of visual words with ORB features.YesYesPrivate companyLGPL
PIBE An adaptive image browsing system that provides users with an intuitive, easy-to-use, structured view of an image collection and complements it with ideas from the field of adaptable content-based similarity search. A hierarchical view of images (the Browsing Tree) that can be customized according to user preferences is provided.YesNoUniversityClosed
PicsLikeThat Image search using visual similarity search and sorting combined with a recommender system. (Cooperation of pixolution GmbH, fotolia and HTW Berlin)NoNo12MUniversityClosed
PIRIA CBIR tool developed at CEA-LIST, LVIC (Vision and Content Engineering Laboratory).YesYes1000 MUniversityClosed
Pixcavator Similar image search based on topological image analysisYesNoDesktop-basedPrivate companyClosed
QuickLook Visual information retrieval system with relevance feedbackNoYesUniversityClosed
RETIN Interactive images retrieval system - CNRS - ETIS Lab., MIDI TeamNoNoUniversityClosed
Retrievr Search and explore in a selection of Flickr images by drawing a rough sketch or uploading an image.NoNoUniversityClosed
SHIATSU A novel system for automatic video tagging which is based on shot boundaries detection and hierarchical annotation processes. The tagging phase assigns semantic concepts to both shot sequences and whole videos, by exploiting visual features extracted from key frames.YesYesUniversityClosed
SIMBA demo of system by the Albert-Ludwigs-Universitet Freiburg (Germany) Inst. for Pattern Recognition and Image ProcessingYesNo0.002MUniversityClosed
TagProp The demonstration of image annotation tool TagProp in ICCV2009 for image set: Corel 5k ESP Game IAPR TC-12 and MIR Flickr.NoYesInstituteClosed
VIRaL Visual Image Retrieval and Localization: A visual search engine that, given a query image, retrieves photos depicting the same object or scene under varying viewpoint or lighting conditions. Using Flickr photos of urban scenes, it automatically estimates where a picture is taken, suggests tags, identifies known landmarks or points of interest, and links to relevant Wikipedia articles. It currently supports 39 cities around the world.YesYes2.221MUniversityClosed
Windsurf A general framework for efficiently processing content-based image queries with particular emphasis to the region-based paradigm; it provides an environment where different alternatives of the paradigm can be implemented, allowing such implementations to be compared on a fair basis, from the points of view of both effectiveness and efficiency.YesNoUniversityOpen but not free