Searchplex ID Retrieval terminology registry

Task Family

Image Retrieval

Canonical ID https://id.searchplex.net/image-retrieval/

A retrieval task in which the target items are images or image-like visual objects.

Also called

  • Image Search
  • Visual Search

Scope

Image retrieval may use text queries, metadata, visual features, embeddings, or example images. In industry it is often called image search or visual search. It is distinct from reverse image search, where the query itself is an image, and from cross-modal retrieval, where query and target modalities differ.

Observed terms

  • Visual Product Search commerce-search
  • Vision Search industry

Part of family

Includes

Not equivalent to

  • Image Retrieval is not Cross-Modal Retrieval. Image retrieval targets images; cross-modal retrieval crosses between different query and result modalities.
  • Image Retrieval is not Reverse Image Search. Image retrieval retrieves images in general; reverse image search specifically uses an image or visual example as the query.
  • Image Retrieval is not Semantic Search. Image retrieval names the target modality; semantic search names a meaning-oriented retrieval goal or capability.
  • Image Retrieval is not Multimodal Retrieval. Image retrieval targets images; multimodal retrieval is broader and may involve images, text, video, audio, tables, or combinations of modalities.

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ID