A generalized prime-number-based matrix strategy for efficient iconic indexing of symbolic pictures

摘要

In this paper, we propose an efficient iconic indexing strategy called generalized prime-number-based matrix (GPN Matrix) for symbolic pictures, in which each spatial relationship between any two objects is represented as a product of some prime numbers from a set of 12 prime numbers and is recorded in a matrix. In the proposed strategy, we classify l69 spatial relationships between two objects in 2D space into five spatial categories, and define a generalized category rule (based on module operations) for each of those five spatial categories. As compared to the prime-number-based matrix (PN Matrix) strategy (Chang and Yang, 1997), in which each spatial relationship between any two objects is represented as a product of some prime numbers from a set of l7 prime numbers, the GPN Matrix strategy has a smaller storage space requirement than the PN Matrix strategy, which also improves the query processing time.