ANVIL is an information retrieval system using natural language processing techniques,
intended for retrieval of captioned images. It extracts dependency structures from the image
captions and user queries, and then applies a high accuracy matching algorithm which
recursively explores the dependency structures to determine their similarity. A further algorithm
allows additional contextual information to be extracted following a successful match, with
the intention of helping users understand and organise the retrieval results. ANVIL was
developed to high engineering standards, and as well as looking at the research aspects of
the system, we also look at some of the design and development issues. English and Japanese
versions of the system have been developed.