Thousands of images are generated every day, which implies the necessity to classify, organise and access them using an easy, faster and efficient way. Scene classification, the classification of images into semantic categories (e.g. coast, mountains and streets), is a challenging and important problem nowadays. Many different approaches concerning scene classification have been proposed in the last few years. This article presents a detailed review of some of the most commonly used scene classification approaches. Furthermore, the surveyed techniques have been tested and their accuracy evaluated. Comparative results are shown and discussed giving the advantages and disadvantages of each methodology. Ó 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.