Spatial Analogy and Subsumption

Abstract

This chapter describes spatial analogy and subsumption. A concept image may only have other concepts as parts. An unclassified or instance image can only have other instances as parts. A classification of an image is the inference of a link to a concept. It has been suggested that the notion of classification can be extended to images. There are a number of spatio-analogical inferences that can be made about a target image. The image can be classified, the location of parts can be predicted, unknown parts can be identified, or a pattern can be recognized in an image. The latter three tasks can be viewed as a form of abductive inference, relying on a good ability to perform analogical classification. The computation of similarity is a central process of analogical inference. The similarity of two images can be measured in terms of the transformations needed to bring them into equivalence. Many types of transformations are possible such as replacing, deleting, or moving a part, or moving all parts simultaneously.