GraphOnto: OWL-based ontology management and multimedia annotation in the DS-MIRF framework

We present here GraphOnto, a software component and an API that allow the definition and editing of both standard-based and domain OWL ontologies and their use in multimedia information system components. In our working environment an OWL Upper Ontology that captures the MPEG-7 MDS is utilized and OWL domain ontologies extend the upper ontology with domain knowledge. The ontologies imported in GraphOnto are parsed so that graphical ontology browsing and editing interfaces are automatically generated. The ontologies are used to guide the semantic multimedia annotation in a standardized manner. OWL Ontology mappings, expressed using OWL constructs, are supported and allow the definition of personalized ontologies. Personalization of the GraphOnto user interface on the application, task and user levels is provided. In addition, GraphOnto interoperates with an MPEG-7 Repository both for semantic entity reuse during multimedia content annotation and for semantic description storage. GraphOnto has been evaluated against Protégé and clearly outperforms it.