Searching for the Big Picture
Large-scale analysis of images along with the text could soon be possible, thanks to new research led by Hagit Shatkay, an associate professor of computer and information sciences at the University of Delaware. She has received a $1.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to pursue this direction.
This ability could accelerate fundamental, potentially life-saving biomedical research. Researchers often need to examine hundreds and even thousands of published journal articles in short order. Finding the pivotal, evidence-supported information within the publication is a tricky task when essential experimental evidence lies in images and captions that are not automatically searchable by Google or PubMed.