Muscle NoE --- 4M Infrastructure: Final Revision

The management and the exchange of multimedia data is a challenging area of research due to variety formats, standards and the many interesting planned applications. The difficulty has caused by the growing of the multimedia reading and creation systems (e.g., digital camera, i-pod, low-cost personal computer, etc.). Due to this phenomenon, the algorithms to search the multimedia documents and to eliminate data redundancy are often ineffective in practice (if and when they exist). MUSCLE (Multimedia Understanding through Semantics, Computation and Learning) is an EC-sponsored Network of Excellence (NoE) project aiming to foster collaboration and improve tools in the areas of multimedia data-mining and machine-learning. Within MUSCLE, some research has been focused on standards, technologies and techniques for integrating, exchanging and enhancing the use of multimedia. The activity of ISTI CNR in Pisa was finalized to develop the 4M Infrastructure (MultiMedia Metadata Management) oriented to the management of multimedia metadata.