This book presents the most recent achievements in some rapidly developing fields within Computer Science. This includes the very latest research in biometrics and computer security systems, and descriptions of the latest inroads in artificial intelligence applications. The book contains over 30 articles by well-known scientists and engineers. The articles are extended versions of works introduced at the ACS-CISIM 2005 conference.

Traditionally, say 15 years ago, three-dimensional image analysis (aka computer vi sion) and three-dimensional image synthesis (aka computer graphics) were separate fields. Rarely were expert"

This book contains the carefully selected and reviewed papers presented at three satellite events that were held in conjunction with the 11th International Conference on Web Information Systems Engineering, WISE 2010, in Hong Kong, China, in December 2010. The collection comprises a total of 40 contributions that originate from the First International Symposium on Web Intelligent Systems and Services (WISS 2010), from the First International Workshop on Cloud Information Systems Engineering (CISE 2010) and from the Second International Workshop on Mobile Business Collaboration (MBC 2010). The papers address a wide range of hot topics and are organized in topical sections on: decision and e-markets; rules and XML; web service intelligence; semantics and services; analyzing web resources; engineering web systems; intelligent web applications; web communities and personalization; cloud information system engineering; mobile business collaboration.

This is the first edited book that deals with the special topic of signals and images within Case-Based Reasoning (CBR). Signal-interpreting systems are becoming increasingly popular in medical, industrial, ecological, biotechnological and many other applications. Existing statistical and knowledge-based techniques lack robustness, accuracy and flexibility. New strategies are needed that can adapt to changing environmental conditions, signal variation, user needs and process requirements. Introducing CBR strategies into signal-interpreting systems can satisfy these requirements.

Conceptually, a database consists of objects and relationships. Object Relationship Notation (ORN) is a simple notation that more precisely defines relationships by combining UML multiplicities with uniquely defined referential actions.

This book shows how ORN can be used in UML class diagrams and database definition languages (DDLs) to better model and implement relationships and thus more productively develop database applications. For the database developer, it presents many examples of relationships modeled using ORN-extended class diagrams and shows how these relationships are easily mapped to an ORN-extended SQL or Object DDL. For the DBMS developer, it presents the specifications and algorithms needed to implement ORN in a relational and object DBMS.

This book also describes tools that can be downloaded or accessed via the Web. These tools allow databases to be modeled using ORN and implemented using automatic code generation that adds ORN support to Microsoft SQL Server and Progress Object Store.

Object Relationship Notation (ORN) for Database Applications: Enhancing the Modeling and Implementation of Associations is written for research scientists, research libraries, professionals, and advanced-level students in computer science.

As a graduate student at Ohio State in the mid-1970s, I inherited a unique c- puter vision laboratory from the doctoral research of previous students. They had designed and built an early frame-grabber to deliver digitized color video from a (very large) electronic video camera on a tripod to a mini-computer (sic) with a (huge ) disk drive-about the size of four washing machines. They had also - signed a binary image array processor and programming language, complete with a user's guide, to facilitate designing software for this one-of-a-kindprocessor. The overall system enabled programmable real-time image processing at video rate for many operations. I had the whole lab to myself. I designed software that detected an object in the eldofview, trackeditsmovementsinrealtime, anddisplayedarunningdescription of the events in English. For example: "An object has appeared in the upper right corner...Itismovingdownandtotheleft...Nowtheobjectisgettingcloser...The object moved out of sight to the left"-about like that. The algorithms were simple, relying on a suf cient image intensity difference to separate the object from the background (a plain wall). From computer vision papers I had read, I knew that vision in general imaging conditions is much more sophisticated. But it worked, it was great fun, and I was hooked.

Generally speaking, Biosignals refer to signals recorded from the human body. They can be either electrical (e. g. Electrocardiogram (ECG), Electroencephalogram (EEG), Electromyogram (EMG), etc. ) or non-electrical (e. g. breathing, movements, etc. ). The acquisition and processing of such signals play an important role in clinical routines. They are usually considered as major indicators which provide clinicians and physicians with useful information during diagnostic and monitoring processes. In some applications, the purpose is not necessarily medical. It may also be industrial. For instance, a real-time EEG system analysis can be used to control and analyze the vigilance of a car driver. In this case, the purpose of such a system basically consists of preventing crash risks. Furthermore, in certain other appli- tions, asetof biosignals (e. g. ECG, respiratorysignal, EEG, etc. ) can be used toc- trol or analyze human emotions. This is the case of the famous polygraph system, also known as the "lie detector," the ef ciency of which remains open to debate Thus when one is dealing with biosignals, special attention must be given to their acquisition, their analysis and their processing capabilities which constitute the nal stage preceding the clinical diagnosis. Naturally, the diagnosis is based on the information provided by the processing system.

Computational methodologies of signal processing and imaging analysis, namely considering 2D and 3D images, are commonly used in different applications of the human society. For example, Computational Vision systems are progressively used for surveillance tasks, traf?c analysis, recognition process, inspection p- poses, human-machine interfaces, 3D vision and deformation analysis. One of the main characteristics of the Computational Vision domain is its int- multidisciplinary. In fact, in this domain, methodologies of several more fundam- tal sciences, such as Informatics, Mathematics, Statistics, Psychology, Mechanics and Physics are usually used. Besides this inter-multidisciplinary characteristic, one of the main reasons that contributes for the continually effort done in this domain of the human knowledge is the number of applications in the medical area. For instance, it is possible to consider the use of statistical or physical procedures on medical images in order to model the represented structures. This modeling can have different goals, for example: shape reconstruction, segmentation, registration, behavior interpretation and simulation, motion and deformation analysis, virtual reality, computer-assisted therapy or tissue characterization. The main objective of the ECCOMAS Thematic Conferences on Computational Vision and Medical Image Processing (VIPimage) is to promote a comprehensive forum for discussion on the recent advances in the related ?elds trying to id- tify widespread areas of potential collaboration between researchers of different sciences.

Computer vision and image analysis require interdisciplinary collaboration between mathematics and engineering. This book addresses the area of high-accuracy measurements of length, curvature, motion parameters and other geometrical quantities from acquired image data. It is a common problem that these measurements are incomplete or noisy, such that considerable efforts are necessary to regularise the data, to fill in missing information, and to judge the accuracy and reliability of these results. This monograph brings together contributions from researchers in computer vision, engineering and mathematics who are working in this area.

The book can be read both by specialists and graduate students in computer science, electrical engineering or mathematics who take an interest in data evaluations by approximation or interpolation, in particular data obtained in an image analysis context.

Motivated learning is an emerging research field in artificial intelligence and cognitive modelling. Computational models of motivation extend reinforcement learning to adaptive, multitask learning in complex, dynamic environments - the goal being to understand how machines can develop new skills and achieve goals that were not predefined by human engineers. In particular, this book describes how motivated reinforcement learning agents can be used in computer games for the design of non-player characters that can adapt their behaviour in response to unexpected changes in their environment.

This book covers the design, application and evaluation of computational models of motivation in reinforcement learning. The authors start with overviews of motivation and reinforcement learning, then describe models for motivated reinforcement learning. The performance of these models is demonstrated by applications in simulated game scenarios and a live, open-ended virtual world.

Researchers in artificial intelligence, machine learning and artificial life will benefit from this book, as will practitioners working on complex, dynamic systems - in particular multiuser, online games.

From grading and preparing harvested vegetables to the tactile probing of a patient 's innermost recesses, mechatronics has become part of our way of life. This cutting-edge volume features the 30 best papers of the 13th International Conference on Mechatronics and Machine Vision in Practice. Although there is no shortage of theoretical and technical detail in these chapters, they have a common theme in that they describe work that has been applied in practice.

This book deals with various image processing and machine vision problems efficiently with splines and includes: the significance of Bernstein Polynomial in splines, detailed coverage of Beta-splines applications which are relatively new, Splines in motion tracking, various deformative models and their uses. Finally the book covers wavelet splines which are efficient and effective in different image applications.

Computer security - the protection of data and computer systems from intentional, malicious intervention - is attracting increasing attention. Much work has gone into development of tools to detect ongoing or already perpetrated attacks, but a key shortfall in current intrusion detection systems is the high number of false alarms they produce. This book analyzes the false alarm problem, then applies results from the field of information visualization to the problem of intrusion detection. Four different visualization approaches are presented, mainly applied to data from web server access logs.

The five volume set CCIS 224-228 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International conference on Applied Informatics and Communication, ICAIC 2011, held in Xi'an, China in August 2011.

The 446 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers cover a broad range of topics in computer science and interdisciplinary applications including control, hardware and software systems, neural computing, wireless networks, information systems, and image processing.

Neural networks are members of a class of software that have the potential to enable intelligent computational systems capable of simulating characteristics of biological thinking and learning. Currently no standards exist to verify and validate neural network-based systems. NASA Independent Verification and Validation Facility has contracted the Institute for Scientific Research, Inc. to perform research on this topic and develop a comprehensive guide to performing V&V on adaptive systems, with emphasis on neural networks used in safety-critical or mission-critical applications.

Methods and Procedures for the Verification and Validation of Artificial Neural Networks is the culmination of the first steps in that research. This volume introduces some of the more promising methods and techniques used for the verification and validation (V&V) of neural networks and adaptive systems. A comprehensive guide to performing V&V on neural network systems, aligned with the IEEE Standard for Software Verification and Validation, will follow this book.

Knowledge Discovery today is a significant study and research area. In finding answers to many research questions in this area, the ultimate hope is that knowledge can be extracted from various forms of data around us. This book covers recent advances in unsupervised and supervised data analysis methods in Computational Intelligence for knowledge discovery. In its first part the book provides a collection of recent research on distributed clustering, self organizing maps and their recent extensions. If labeled data or data with known associations are available, we may be able to use supervised data analysis methods, such as classifying neural networks, fuzzy rule-based classifiers, and decision trees. Therefore this book presents a collection of important methods of supervised data analysis. "Classification and Clustering for Knowledge Discovery" also includes variety of applications of knowledge discovery in health, safety, commerce, mechatronics, sensor networks, and telecommunications.

Mathematical morphology (MM) is a powerful methodology for the quantitative analysis of geometrical structures. It consists of a broad and coherent collection of theoretical concepts, nonlinear signal operators, and algorithms aiming at extracting, from images or other geometrical objects, information related to their shape and size. Its mathematical origins stem from set theory, lattice algebra, and integral and stochastic geometry. MM was initiated in the late 1960s by G. Matheron and J. Serra at the Fontainebleau School of Mines in France. Originally it was applied to analyzing images from geological or biological specimens. However, its rich theoretical framework, algorithmic efficiency, easy implementability on special hardware, and suitability for many shape- oriented problems have propelled its widespread diffusion and adoption by many academic and industry groups in many countries as one among the dominant image analysis methodologies. The purpose of Mathematical Morphology and its Applications to Image and Signal Processing is to provide the image analysis community with a sampling from the current developments in the theoretical (deterministic and stochastic) and computational aspects of MM and its applications to image and signal processing. The book consists of the papers presented at the ISMM'96 grouped into the following themes: Theory Connectivity Filtering Nonlinear System Related to Morphology Algorithms/Architectures Granulometries, Texture Segmentation Image Sequence Analysis Learning Document Analysis Applications

Networked computers are ubiquitous, and are subject to attack, misuse, and abuse. One method to counteracting this cyber threat is to provide security analysts with better tools to discover patterns, detect anomalies, identify correlations, and communicate their findings. Visualization for computer security (VizSec) researchers and developers are doing just that. VizSec is about putting robust information visualization tools into the hands of human analysts to take advantage of the power of the human perceptual and cognitive processes in solving computer security problems. This volume collects the papers presented at the 4th International Workshop on Computer Security - VizSec 2007.

Recent progress in research, teaching and communication has arisen from the use of new tools in visualization. To be fruitful, visualization needs precision and beauty. This book is a source of mathematical illustrations by mathematicians as well as artists. It offers examples in many basic mathematical fields including polyhedra theory, group theory, solving polynomial equations, dynamical systems and differential topology.
For a long time, arts, architecture, music and painting have been the source of new developments in mathematics. And vice versa, artists have often found new techniques, themes and inspiration within mathematics. Here, while mathematicians provide mathematical tools for the analysis of musical creations, the contributions from sculptors emphasize the role of mathematics in their work.

Soft computing represents a collection of techniques, such as neural networks, evolutionary computation, fuzzy logic, and probabilistic reasoning. As - posed to conventional "hard" computing, these techniques tolerate impre- sion and uncertainty, similar to human beings. In the recent years, successful applications of these powerful methods have been published in many dis- plines in numerous journals, conferences, as well as the excellent books in this book series on Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing. This volume is dedicated to recent novel applications of soft computing in multimedia processing. The book is composed of 21 chapters written by experts in their respective fields, addressing various important and timely problems in multimedia computing such as content analysis, indexing and retrieval, recognition and compression, processing and filtering, etc. In the chapter authored by Guan, Muneesawang, Lay, Amin, and Lee, a radial basis function network with Laplacian mixture model is employed to perform image and video retrieval. D. Androutsos, P. Androutsos, Plataniotis, and Venetsanopoulos investigate color image indexing and retrieval within a small-world framework. Wu and Yap develop a framework of fuzzy relevance feedback to model the uncertainty of users' subjective perception in image retrieval.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Human Behavior Understanding, HBU 2011, held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in November 2011, in conjunction with AmI-11, the International Joint Conference on Ambient Intelligence.
The 13 revised full papers presented together with 2 keynote talks and one summarizing paper were carefully reviewed and selected from 32 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on analysis of human actions and activities, face and gesture analysis, persuasive technologies, and social interactions.

This book approaches the realisation of digital terrain and landscape data through clear and practical examples. From data provision and the creation of revealing analyses to realistic depictions for presentation purposes, the reader is led through the world of digital 3-D graphics. The authors deep knowledge of the scientific fundamentals and many years of experience in 3-D visualization enable them to lead the reader through a complex subject and shed light on previously murky virtual landscapes.

Many computer scientists, engineers, applied mathematicians, and physicists use geometry theory and geometric computing methods in the design of perception-action systems, intelligent autonomous systems, and man-machine interfaces. This handbook brings together the most recent advances in the application of geometric computing for building such systems, with contributions from leading experts in the important fields of neuroscience, neural networks, image processing, pattern recognition, computer vision, uncertainty in geometric computations, conformal computational geometry, computer graphics and visualization, medical imagery, geometry and robotics, and reaching and motion planning. For the first time, the various methods are presented in a comprehensive, unified manner.

This handbook is highly recommended for postgraduate students and researchers working on applications such as automated learning; geometric and fuzzy reasoning; human-like artificial vision; tele-operation; space maneuvering; haptics; rescue robots; man-machine interfaces; tele-immersion; computer- and robotics-aided neurosurgery or orthopedics; the assembly and design of humanoids; and systems for metalevel reasoning.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of four workshops held as satellite events of the JSAI International Symposia on Artificial Intelligence 2010, in Tokyo, Japan, in November 2010. The 28 revised full papers with four papers for the following four workshops presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 70 papers. The papers are organized in sections Logic and Engineering of Natural Language Semantics (LENLS), Juris-Informatics (JURISIN), Advanced Methodologies for Bayesian Networks (AMBN), and Innovating Service Systems (ISS).

The authors survey a recent technique in computer vision called Interactive Co-segmentation, which is the task of simultaneously extracting common foreground objects from multiple related images. They survey several of the algorithms, present underlying common ideas, and give an overview of applications of object co-segmentation.