LIRE: open source visual information retrieval

With an annual growth rate of 16.2% of taken photos a year, researchers predict an almost unbelievable number of 4.9 trillion stored images in 2017. Nearly 80% of these photos in 2017 will be taken with mobile phones. To be able to cope with this immense amount of visual data in a fast and accurate way, a visual information retrieval systems are needed for various domains and applications. LIRE, short for Lucene Image Retrieval, is a light weight and easy to use Java library for visual information retrieval. It allows developers and researchers to integrate common content based image retrieval approaches in their applications and research projects. LIRE supports global and local image features and can cope with millions of images using approximate search and distributing indexes on the cloud. In this demo we present a novel tool called F-search that emphasize the core strengths of LIRE: lightness, speed and accuracy.