Abstract: A method of obtaining a 3-dimensional shape of an object from a sequence of image frames includes the steps of a) generating a tracking matrix which has matrix elements representing coordinates of feature points of the object tracked through the sequence, and has each row representing a corresponding image frame and each column representing a corresponding feature point, wherein some of the matrix elements are missing, b) generating an estimation matrix as a sub-matrix of the tracking matrix by selecting rows and by selecting a column of a given feature point and columns of a predetermined number of feature points closest to the given feature point, such that the estimation matrix has matrix elements thereof missing only for the given feature point in a single image frame, c) calculating estimates of the missing matrix elements of the estimation matrix, d) repeating the steps b) and c) to obtain estimates of remaining missing matrix elements of the tracking matrix, and e) obtaining a 3-dimensional shape of th

Abstract: Ranked database is generated for referring to images. The database contains references or key text to images, and the references are ranked for predetermined degrees of relevance to the images.