Lecturer: Maria Grazia Albanesi  

Course name: Multimedia Databases
Course code: 504711
Degree course: Computer Engeneering
Disciplinary field of science: ING-INF/05
L'insegnamento è caratterizzante per: Computer Engeneering
University credits: ECTS 12
Course website: http://cdol.unipv.it/

Specific course objectives

The main course objective is the knowlegde of the fundamentals of creation, management, access and optimization of multimedia databases and of other types of collection of multimedial data, such as, iamges, video and audio. It is mandatory to understand the differences between the management of textual data and multimedial data; besides, it is important to focus the resolved problems and the open challenges of the algorithms available today.

Course programme

The course has a first part which describes the theory of multimedia data management and a second part of analysis of case studies suitable to understand the state of the art and the technological solutions and the main open chiallenges in the scientific research of this field.

Introductions

• The menaing of multimedia
• Databases and other types of archiving multimedial data

The search in multimedia databases

• Types of search
• The search on metadata
• The indexing
• Content based retrieval

Images in databases

• Storing images
• Data strucutres
• The search bases on shape, color and texture

Search for similarity

• The Space metric approach
• Distance measures
• Centralized and parallel indexes

Video databases

• Searching in video
• Case studies on video

Audio Databases

• Semantic approach to audio
• Audio search with fingerprinting
• Efficiency in audio search

Multimedial data for New Media

• Definition of New Media
• Value chain of new media
• The digital television and convergency to Internet
• Multimedial data on mobile computing

Case studies
This part is updated every year to include the mosti sigbnificant and recent examples presented to the scientific community

• Databases and social media
• Examples of search by shape, by color
• Biometric databases (finger prints, iris and face recognition)

Course entry requirements

The knowledge of theory of relationa DBMS and SQL language.

Course structure and teaching

Lectures (hours/year in lecture theatre): 90
Practical class (hours/year in lecture theatre): 0
Practicals / Workshops (hours/year in lecture theatre): 0

Suggested reading materials

The course is about a wide spectrum of topics, therefore it is not possible to use only one book. On the web site of the course references will be published to research articles which can used, together with the lessons, in substitutions of one of more text books.

V. Castelli, L. D. Bergman. Search and retrieval of digital imagery. Wiley, 2002.

H. R. Wu, K. R. Rao. Digital Video Image Quality and Perceptual Coding. Taylor and Francis, 2006.

P. Zezula, G. Amato, V. Dohnal, M. Batko. Similarity Search - The metric space approach . Springer, 2006.

Testing and exams

For students attending the lessons: a written exam on the theory and a project realized during the course. For students not attending the lessons (working students, students from other faculties): a written exam on the theory and a project arranged with the teacher and discussed in an oral presentation.