US 11,874,863 B2
Query expansion in information retrieval systems
Ivan Girardi, Birmensdorf (CH); Harold Douglas Dykeman, Richterswil (CH); Andrea Giovannini, Zurich (CH); Adam Ivankay, Zürich (CH); Chiara Marchiori, Birmensdorf (CH); Kevin Thandiackal, Gattikon (CH); and Mario Zusag, Vienna (AT)
Assigned to International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US)
Filed by INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION, Armonk, NY (US)
Filed on Apr. 3, 2020, as Appl. No. 16/839,131.
Claims priority of provisional application 62/987,758, filed on Mar. 10, 2020.
Prior Publication US 2021/0286831 A1, Sep. 16, 2021
Int. Cl. G06F 16/33 (2019.01); G06N 3/049 (2023.01); G06N 20/20 (2019.01)
CPC G06F 16/3338 (2019.01) [G06N 3/049 (2013.01); G06N 20/20 (2019.01)] 10 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method for query expansion, the method comprising:
a) receiving a current query having at least one search term;
b) inputting the at least one search term of the current query to a set of query expansion modules, wherein the set of query expansion modules predict expansion terms of input terms, wherein the set of query expansion modules include a specified number of query expansion modules with each query expansion module comprising a machine learning model, and wherein each query expansion module further comprises an encoder and an outputting module to predict the expansion terms using outputs generated by the encoder;
c) in response to the inputting, receiving from the set of query expansion modules candidate expansion terms of the search term;
d) modifying, by the set of query expansion modules, the current query using at least part of the candidate expansion terms, resulting in a modified query having at least one modified search term; and
e) repeating steps b) to d) using the modified query as the current query, the repeating being performed until a predefined stopping criterion is fulfilled, wherein the repeating further comprises adjusting in each iteration of the method the specified number of query expansion modules used for predicting the expansion terms and modifying the current query.