Traditional instant messaging service mainly transfers textual message, while the visual message is ignored to a great extent. In this paper, we propose a novel instant messaging scheme with visual aids named Chat with Illustration (CWI), which presents users visual messages associated with chat content automatically. When users start their chat, the system first identifies meaningful keywords from dialogue content and analyzes context relations. Then CWI explores keyword-based image search in

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... image database with cluster-based index. Finally, according to context relations, CWI assembles these images properly and presents an optimal visual message for each dialogue sentence. With the combination of textual and visual message, users could enjoy a more interesting and vivid communication experience. Especially for different native language speakers, CWI can help them cross language barrier to some degree. The in-depth user studies demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.