*** REGISTRATION NOW OPEN AT IMAGECLEF 2008 ***

       *** Call for participation: wikipediaMM image retrieval 2008 ***

In 2008, ImageCLEF introduces a new ad hoc image retrieval task that
provides a testbed for the system-oriented evaluation of visual information
retrieval from a collection of Wikipedia images. The aim is to investigate
multimodal retrieval approaches in the context of a larger scale and
heterogeneous collection of images (similar to those encountered on the Web)
searched by users with diverse information needs.

This task is called wikipediaMM and will use the image collection created
and employed by the INEX Multimedia (MM) Track (2006-2007) that contains
approximately 150,000 images covering diverse topics of interest. These
images are associated with unstructured and noisy textual annotations in
English.

The main aim is to investigate:
  * how well do the retrieval approaches cope with larger scale image
collections?
  * how well do the retrieval approaches cope with noisy and unstructured
textual annotations?
  * how well do the content-based retrieval approaches cope with images that
cover diverse topics and are of varying quality?
  * how well can systems exploit and combine different modalities given a
user's multimedia information need? Can they outperform monomodal approaches
like query-by-text, query-by-concept or query-by-image?


If you are interested in participating in this task, read on and/or go to
the ImageCLEF web site and register.

         http://www.imageclef.org/?q=ImageCLEF2008
         http://www.imageclef.org/?q=2008/wikipedia



*** IMPORTANT CONDITION ***

The wikipediaMM task adopts the user model followed in INEX, whereby the
participants in the various tracks create (some of) the topics and perform
the relevance assessments themselves.

Therefore, participation in ImageCLEF's wikipediaMM task requires that each
participating group:
    * creates topics
    * performs the relevance assessments on the created topics

Note that only those who participate in the topic development and assessment
process will be granted access to the relevance assessments.


The schedule can be found here:

    * 20.2.2008: registration opens for all CLEF tasks
    * 15.3.2008: data release
    * 17.3.2008: instructions and formatting criteria for candidate
topics/queries provided to participants
    * 10.4.2008: submission deadline for candidate topics
    * 16.4.2008: topic release
    * 30.5.2008: submission of runs
    * 4.6.2008: distribution of merged results to participants for relevance
assessments
    * 7.7.2008: submission deadline for relevance assessments
    * 15.7.2008: release of results
    * 15.8.1008: submission of working notes papers
    * 17.-19.9.2008: CLEF workshop in Aarhus, Denmark


If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us.

Organisers

* Theodora Tsikrika, Database Architectures and Information Access Group, 
CWI, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, [log in to unmask]
* Jana Kludas, Computer Vision and Multimedia Laboratory, University of
Geneva, Switzerland, [log in to unmask]