The present invention is directed to a context-based image retrieval (CBIR) system for disease estimation based on the multi-atlas framework, in which the demographic and diagnostic information of multiple atlases are weighted and fused to generate an estimated diagnosis, on a structure-by-structure basis. The present invention demonstrates high accuracy in age estimation, as well as diagnostic estimation in Alzheimer's disease. The system and the pathology-based multi atlases can be used to estimate various types of disease and pathology with the choice of patient attributes. The present invention is also directed to a method of context-based image retrieval.
