Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) technology has been proposed to benefit not only the management of increasingly large medical image collections, but also to aid clinical care, biomedical research, and education. Based on a literature review, we conclude that there is widespread enthusiasm for CBIR in the engineering research community, but the application of this technology to solve practical medical problems is a goal yet to be realized. Furthermore, we highlight “gaps” between desired CBIR system functionality and what has been achieved to date, present a comparative analysis of four state-of-the-art CBIR implementations using the gap approach for illustration, and suggest that high-priority gaps to be overcome lie.
