A review of EO image information mining

We analyze the state of the art of content-based retrieval in Earth observation image archives focusing on complete systems showing promise for operational implementation. The different paradigms at the basis of the main system families are introduced. The approaches taken are analyzed, focusing in particular on the phases after primitive feature extraction. The solutions envisaged for the issues related to feature simplification and synthesis, indexing, semantic labeling are reviewed. The methodologies for query specification and execution are analyzed.