The present invention is an automated and extensible system for the analysis and retrieval of images based on region-of-interest (ROI) analysis of one or more true objects depicted by an image. The system uses an ROI database that is a relational or analytical database containing searchable vectors that represent the images stored in a repository. Entries in the database are created by an image locator and ROI classifier that work to locate images within the repository and extract relevant information that will be stored in the ROI database. The ROI classifier analyzes objects in an image identify actual features of the true object. Graphical searches are performed by the collaborative workings of an image retrieval module, an image search requestor and an ROI query module. The image search requestor is an abstraction layer that translates user or agent search requests into the language understood by the ROI query.