Traditionally, scientific fields have defined boundaries, and scientists work on research problems within those boundaries. However, from time to time those boundaries get shifted or blurred to evolve new fields. For instance, the original goal of computer vision was to understand a single image of a scene, by identifying objects, their structure, and spatial arrangements. This has been referred to as image understanding. Recently, computer vision has gradually been making the transition away from understanding single images to analyzing image sequences, or video understanding. Video understanding deals with understanding of video sequences, e. g., recognition of gestures, activities, facial expressions, etc. The main shift in the classic paradigm has been from the recognition of static objects in the scene to motion-based recognition of actions and events. Video understanding has overlapping research problems with other fields, therefore blurring the fixed boundaries. Computer graphics, image processing, and video databases have obvious overlap with computer vision. The main goal of computer graphics is to gener ate and animate realistic looking images, and videos. Researchers in computer graphics are increasingly employing techniques from computer vision to gen erate the synthetic imagery. A good example of this is image-based rendering and modeling techniques, in which geometry, appearance, and lighting is de rived from real images using computer vision techniques. Here the shift is from synthesis to analysis followed by synthesis."

This volume presents high quality, state-of-the-art research ideas and results from theoretic, algorithmic and application viewpoints. It contains contributions by leading experts in the obsequious scientific and technological field of multimedia. The book specifically focuses on interaction with multimedia content with special emphasis on multimodal interfaces for accessing multimedia information. The book is designed for a professional audience composed of practitioners and researchers in industry. It is also suitable for advanced-level students in computer science.

Integrating Graphics and Vision for Object Recognition serves as a reference for electrical engineers and computer scientists researching computer vision or computer graphics. Computer graphics and computer vision can be viewed as different sides of the same coin. In graphics, algorithms are given knowledge about the world in the form of models, cameras, lighting, etc., and infer (or render) an image of a scene. In vision, the process is the exact opposite: algorithms are presented with an image, and infer (or interpret) the configuration of the world. This work focuses on using computer graphics to interpret camera images: using iterative rendering to predict what should be visible by the camera and then testing and refining that hypothesis. Features of the book include: Many illustrations to supplement the text; A novel approach to the integration of graphics and vision; Genetic algorithms for vision; Innovations in closed loop object recognition. Integrating Graphics and Vision for Object Recognition will be of interest to research scientists and practitioners working in fields related to the topic. It may also be used as an advanced-level graduate text.

MPEG-4 is the multimedia standard for combining interactivity, natural and synthetic digital video, audio and computer-graphics. Typical applications are: internet, video conferencing, mobile videophones, multimedia cooperative work, teleteaching and games. With MPEG-4 the next step from block-based video (ISO/IEC MPEG-1, MPEG-2, CCITT H.261, ITU-T H.263) to arbitrarily-shaped visual objects is taken. This significant step demands a new methodology for system analysis and design to meet the considerably higher flexibility of MPEG-4. Motion estimation is a central part of MPEG-1/2/4 and H.261/H.263 video compression standards and has attracted much attention in research and industry, for the following reasons: it is computationally the most demanding algorithm of a video encoder (about 60-80% of the total computation time), it has a high impact on the visual quality of a video encoder, and it is not standardized, thus being open to competition. Algorithms, Complexity Analysis, and VLSI Architectures for MPEG-4 Motion Estimation covers in detail every single step in the design of a MPEG-1/2/4 or H.261/H.263 compliant video encoder: Fast motion estimation algorithms Complexity analysis tools Detailed complexity analysis of a software implementation of MPEG-4 video Complexity and visual quality analysis of fast motion estimation algorithms within MPEG-4 Design space on motion estimation VLSI architectures Detailed VLSI design examples of (1) a high throughput and (2) a low-power MPEG-4 motion estimator. Algorithms, Complexity Analysis and VLSI Architectures for MPEG-4 Motion Estimation is an important introduction to numerous algorithmic, architectural and system design aspects of the multimedia standard MPEG-4. As such, all researchers, students and practitioners working in image processing, video coding or system and VLSI design will find this book of interest.

Integrates computer vision, pattern recognition, and AI.

Presents original research that will benefit researchers and professionals in computer vision, pattern recognition, target recognition, machine learning, evolutionary learning, image processing, knowledge discovery and data mining, cybernetics, robotics, automation and psychology

We welcome you to the First International Conference on Arts and Technology (ArtsIT 2009), hosted by CSIE of the National Ilan University and co-organized by the National Science Council, ICST, College of EECS at National Ilan University, Software Simulation Society in Taiwan, ISAC, TCA, NCHC, CREATE-NET, and Institute for Information Industry. ArtsIT2009 was held in Yilan, Taiwan, during September 24-25, 2009. The conference comprised the following themes: * New Media Technologies (Evolutionary systems that create arts or display art works, such as tracking sensors, wearable computers, mixed reality, etc. ) * Software Art (Image processing or computer graphics techniques that create arts, including algorithmic art, mathematic art, advanced modeling and rend- ing, etc. ) * Animation Techniques (2D or 3D computer animations, AI-based animations, etc. ) * Multimedia (Integration of different media, such as virtual reality systems, audio, performing arts, etc. ) * Interactive Methods (Vision-based tracking and recognition, interactive art, etc. ) The conference program started with an opening ceremony, followed by three keynote speeches and four technical sessions distributed over a period of two days. Two poster sessions, one hour each, were scheduled before the afternoon oral sessions. An Int- active Arts Exhibition was held in conjunction with ArtsIT 2009. Twelve well-known digital arts teams from Taiwan exhibited 15 artworks in this event, including 10 int- active installation arts, 4 video arts, and 1 digital print. The conference received around 50 submissions from 15 different countries.

The four-volume set LNCS 6492-6495 constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 10th Asian Conference on Computer Vision, ACCV 2009, held in Queenstown, New Zealand in November 2010. All together the four volumes present 206 revised papers selected from a total of 739 Submissions. All current issues in computer vision are addressed ranging from algorithms that attempt to automatically understand the content of images, optical methods coupled with computational techniques that enhance and improve images, and capturing and analyzing the world's geometry while preparing the higher level image and shape understanding. Novel gemometry techniques, statistical learning methods, and modern algebraic procedures are dealt with as well.

With contributions by leading scientists in the field, this book gives the first comprehensive overview of the results of the seminal SmartKom project - one of the most advanced multimodal dialogue systems worldwide.

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 covers combinatorial data structures and algorithms, algebraic issues in geometric computing, approximation of curves and surfaces, and computational topology. Each chapter fully details and provides a tutorial introduction to important concepts and results. The focus is on methods which are both well founded mathematically and efficient in practice. Coverage includes references to open source software and discussion of potential applications of the presented techniques.

A number of widely used contemporary processors have instruction-set extensions for improved performance in multi-media applications. The aim is to allow operations to proceed on multiple pixels each clock cycle. Such instruction-sets have been incorporated both in specialist DSPchips such as the Texas C62xx (Texas Instruments, 1998) and in general purpose CPU chips like the Intel IA32 (Intel, 2000) or the AMD K6 (Advanced Micro Devices, 1999). These instruction-set extensions are typically based on the Single Instruc tion-stream Multiple Data-stream (SIMD) model in which a single instruction causes the same mathematical operation to be carried out on several operands, or pairs of operands, at the same time. The level or parallelism supported ranges from two floating point operations, at a time on the AMD K6 architecture to 16 byte operations at a time on the Intel P4 architecture. Whereas processor architectures are moving towards greater levels of parallelism, the most widely used programming languages such as C, Java and Delphi are structured around a model of computation in which operations takeplace on a single value at a time. This was appropriate when processors worked this way, but has become an impediment to programmers seeking to make use of the performance offered by multi-media instruction -sets. The introduction of SIMD instruction sets (Peleg et al."

Thisbook presentsrecentadvancesinthedomainofthe3Dphysiologicalhuman that werepresentedlastDecember at the Workshopon 3D PhysiologicalHuman 2009 that was held in Zermatt, Switzerland. This workshop was funded by the "Third Cycle in Computer Science of Western Switzerland" named CUSO, the European project Focus K3D (ICT-2007-214993), the European Marie Curie project 3D Anatomical Human (MRTN-CT-2006-035763) and the European Network of Excellence InterMedia (NoE-IST-2006-038419). 3D physiological human research is a very active ?eld supported by several scienti?c projects. Many of them are funded by the European Union, such as the 3D Anatomical Human project and those present in the seventh framework programme "Virtual Physiological Human"(FP7-ICT-2007-2). One of the main objectivesof the researchon 3D physiologicalhuman is to create patient-speci?c computer models for personalized healthcare.These models are used to simulate and hence better understand the human physiology and pathology.There is also a synergy in this research in the way medical information is distributed: to have any model available anytime, anywhere on any mobile equipment. A collection of scienti?c articles was proposed to highlight the necessity to exchange and disseminate novel ideas and techniques from a wide range of d- ciplines (computer graphics, biomechanics, knowledge representation, human- machine interface, mobile computing, etc. ) associated with medical imaging, medical simulation, computer-assisted surgery and 3D semantics. The emphasis wason technicalnoveltyalongwith currentandfuture applications for modeling and simulating the anatomical structures and functions of the human body.

The 14th Iberoamerican Congress on Pattern Recognition (CIARP 2009, C- gresoIberoAmericanodeReconocimientodePatrones)formedthelatestofanow longseriesofsuccessfulmeetingsarrangedbytherapidlygrowingIberoamerican pattern recognition community. The conference was held in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico and organized by the Mexican Association for Computer Vision, Neural Computing and Robotics (MACVNR). It was sponsodred by MACVNR and ?ve other Iberoamerican PR societies. CIARP 2009 was like the previous conferences in the series supported by the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR). CIARP 2009 attracted participants from all over the world presenting sta- of-the-artresearchon mathematical methods and computing techniques for p- tern recognition, computer vision, image and signal analysis, robot vision, and speech recognition, as well as on a wide range of their applications. This time the conference attracted participants from 23 countries,9 in Ibe- america, and 14 from other parts of the world. The total number of submitted papers was 187, and after a serious review process 108 papers were accepted, all of them with a scienti?c quality above overall mean rating. Sixty-four were selected as oral presentations and 44 as posters. Since 2008 the conference is almost single track, and therefore there was no real grading in quality between oral and poster papers. As an acknowledgment that CIARP has established itself as a high-quality conference, its proceedings appear in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. Moreover, its visibility is further enhanced by a selection of a set of papers that will be published in a special issue of the journal Pattern Recognition Letters.

The concept of CAST as Computer Aided Systems Theory was introduced by F. Pichler in the late 1980s to refer to computer theoretical and practical developments as tools for solving problems in system science. It was thought of as the third component (the other two being CAD and CAM) required to complete the path from computer and systems sciences to practical developments in science and engineering. Franz Pichler, of the University of Linz, organized the first CAST workshop in April 1988, which demonstrated the acceptance of the concepts by the scientific and technical community. Next, the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria joined the University of Linz to organize the first international meeting on CAST (Las Palmas, February 1989) under the name EUROCAST'89. This proved to be a very successful gathering of systems theorists, computer scientists and engineers from most European countries, North America and Japan. It was agreed that EUROCAST international conferences would be organized every two years, alternating between Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and a continental European location. From 2001 the conference has been held exclusively in Las Palmas. Thus, successive EUROCAST meetings took place in Krems (1991), Las Palmas (1993), In- bruck (1995), Las Palmas (1997), Vienna (1999), Las Palmas (2001), Las Palmas (2003) Las Palmas (2005) and Las Palmas (2007), in addition to an extra-European CAST c- ference in Ottawa in 1994.

The problem of scale pervades both the natural sciences and the vi sual arts. The earliest scientific discussions concentrate on visual per ception (much like today ) and occur in Euclid's (c. 300 B. C. ) Optics and Lucretius' (c. 100-55 B. C. ) On the Nature of the Universe. A very clear account in the spirit of modern "scale-space theory" is presented by Boscovitz (in 1758), with wide ranging applications to mathemat ics, physics and geography. Early applications occur in the cartographic problem of "generalization," the central idea being that a map in order to be useful has to be a "generalized" (coarse grained) representation of the actual terrain (Miller and Voskuil 1964). Broadening the scope asks for progressive summarizing. Very much the same problem occurs in the (realistic) artistic rendering of scenes. Artistic generalization has been analyzed in surprising detail by John Ruskin (in his Modern Painters), who even describes some of the more intricate generic "scale-space sin gularities" in detail: Where the ancients considered only the merging of blobs under blurring, Ruskin discusses the case where a blob splits off another one when the resolution is decreased, a case that has given rise to confusion even in the modern literature."

Thebookpresentsa cross-sectionofstate-of-the-artresearchonmultimodalc- pora, a highly interdisciplinary area that is a prerequisite for various specialized disciplines. A number of the papers included are revised and expanded versions ofpapersacceptedtotheInternationalWorkshoponMultimodal Corpora: From Models of Natural Interaction to Systems and Applications, held in conjunction th with the 6 International Conference for Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC) on May 27, 2008, in Marrakech, Morocco. This international workshop series started in 2000 and has since then grown into a regular satellite event of the bi-annual LREC conference, attracting researchers from ?elds as diverse as psychology, arti?cial intelligence, robotics, signal processing, computational linguisticsandhuman-computerinteraction. Tocomplement theselected papers from the 2008 workshop, we invited well-known researchers from corpus coll- tioninitiativestocontributetothisvolume. Wewereabletoobtainseveninvited research articles, including contributions from major international multimodal corpus projects like AMI and SmartWeb, which complement the six selected workshop contributions. All papers underwent a special review process for this volume, resulting in signi?cant revisions and extensions based on the experts' advice. While we were pleased that the 2006 edition of the workshop resulted in a special issue of the Journal of Language Resources and Evaluation, published in 2007, we felt that this was the time for another major publication, given not onlytherapidprogressandincreasedinterestin this researchareabut especially in order to acknowledge the di?culty of disseminating results across discipline borders. The Springer LNAI series is the perfect platform for doing so. We also created the website www. multimodal-corpora.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th IAPR International Conference on Discrete Geometry for Computer Imagery, DGCI 2009, held in Montreal, Canada, in September/October 2009.

The 42 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on discrete shape, representation, recognition and analysis; discrete and combinatorial tools for image segmentation and analysis; discrete and combinatorial Topology; models for discrete geometry; geometric transforms; and discrete tomography.

This book constitutes the research papers presented at the Joint 2101 & 2102 International Conference on Biometric ID Management and Multimodal Communication.

BioID_MultiComm'09 is a joint International Conference organized cooperatively by COST Actions 2101 and 2102. COST 2101 Action is focused on "Biometrics for Identity Documents and Smart Cards (BIDS)," while COST 2102 Action is entitled "Cross-Modal Analysis of Verbal and Non-verbal Communication."

The aim of COST 2101 is to investigate novel technologies for unsupervised multimodal biometric authentication systems using a new generation of biometrics-enabled identity documents and smart cards.

COST 2102 is devoted to develop an advanced acoustical, perceptual and psychological analysis of verbal and non-verbal communication signals originating in spontaneous face-to-face interaction, in order to identify algorithms and automatic procedures capable of recognizing human emotional states.

Biometrics is a rapidly evolving field with applications ranging from accessing one 's computer to gaining entry into a country. The deployment of large-scale biometric systems in both commercial and government applications has increased public awareness of this technology. Recent years have seen significant growth in biometric research resulting in the development of innovative sensors, new algorithms, enhanced test methodologies and novel applications. This book addresses this void by inviting some of the prominent researchers in Biometrics to contribute chapters describing the fundamentals as well as the latest innovations in their respective areas of expertise.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Vision Systems, ICVS 2009, held in Liege, Belgium, October 13-15, 2009.

The 21 papers for oral presentation presented together with 24 poster presentations and 2 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 96 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on human-machine-interaction, sensors, features and representations, stereo, 3D and optical flow, calibration and registration, mobile and autonomous systems, evaluation, studies and applications, learning, recognition and adaption.

A representation of objects by their parts is the dominant strategy for representing complex 3D objects in many disciplines. In computer vision and robotics, superquadrics are among the most widespread part models. Superquadrics are a family of parametric models that cover a wide variety of smoothly changing 3D symmetric shapes, which are controlled with a small number of parameters and which can be augmented with the addition of global and local deformations. The book covers, in depth, the geometric properties of superquadrics. The main contribution of the book is an original approach to the recovery and segmentation of superquadrics from range images. Several applications of superquadrics in computer vision and robotics are thoroughly discussed and, in particular, the use of superquadrics for range image registration is demonstrated. Audience: The book is intended for readers of all levels who are familiar with and interested in computer vision issues.

Everything you ever wanted to know about multimedia retrieval and management. This comprehensive book offers a full picture of the cutting-edge technologies necessary for a profound introduction to the field. Leading experts also cover a broad range of practical applications.

Appendix 164 3. A 3. A. 1 Approximate Estimation of Fundamental Matrix from General Matrix 164 3. A. 2 Estimation of Affine Transformation 165 4 RECOVERY OF EPIPOLAR GEOMETRY FROM LINE SEGMENTS OR LINES 167 Line Segments or Straight Lines 168 4. 1 4. 2 Solving Motion Using Line Segments Between Two Views 173 4. 2. 1 Overlap of Two Corresponding Line Segments 173 Estimating Motion by Maximizing Overlap 175 4. 2. 2 Implementation Details 4. 2. 3 176 Reconstructing 3D Line Segments 4. 2. 4 179 4. 2. 5 Experimental Results 180 4. 2. 6 Discussions 192 4. 3 Determining Epipolar Geometry of Three Views 194 4. 3. 1 Trifocal Constraints for Point Matches 194 4. 3. 2 Trifocal Constraints for Line Correspondences 199 4. 3. 3 Linear Estimation of K, L, and M Using Points and Lines 200 4. 3. 4 Determining Camera Projection Matrices 201 4. 3. 5 Image Transfer 203 4. 4 Summary 204 5 REDEFINING STEREO, MOTION AND OBJECT RECOGNITION VIA EPIPOLAR GEOMETRY 205 5. 1 Conventional Approaches to Stereo, Motion and Object Recognition 205 5. 1. 1 Stereo 205 5. 1. 2 Motion 206 5. 1. 3 Object Recognition 207 5. 2 Correspondence in Stereo, Motion and Object Recognition as 1D Search 209 5. 2. 1 Stereo Matching 209 xi Contents 5. 2. 2 Motion Correspondence and Segmentation 209 5. 2. 3 3D Object Recognition and Localization 210 Disparity and Spatial Disparity Space 210 5.

Despite the fact that images constitute the main objects in computer vision and image analysis, there is remarkably little concern about their actual definition. In this book a complete account of image structure is proposed in terms of rigorously defined machine concepts, using basic tools from algebra, analysis, and differential geometry. Machine technicalities such as discretisation and quantisation details are de-emphasised, and robustness with respect to noise is manifest. From the foreword by Jan Koenderink: It is my hope that the book will find a wide audience, including physicists - who still are largely unaware of the general importance and power of scale space theory, mathematicians - who will find in it a principled and formally tight exposition of a topic awaiting further development, and computer scientists - who will find here a unified and conceptually well founded framework for many apparently unrelated and largely historically motivated methods they already know and love. The book is suited for self-study and graduate courses, the carefully formulated exercises are designed to get to grips with the subject matter and prepare the reader for original research.'

Images and video play a crucial role in visual information systems and multimedia. There is an extraordinary number of applications of such systems in entertainment, business, art, engineering, and science. Such applications often involved large image and video collections, and therefore, searching for images and video in large collections is becoming an important operation. Because of the size of such databases, efficiency is crucial. We strongly believe that image and video retrieval need an integrated approach from fields such as image processing, shape processing, perception, database indexing, visualization, and querying, etc. This book contains a selection of results that was presented at the Dagstuhl Seminar on Content-Based Image and Video Retrieval, in December 1999. The purpose of this seminar was to bring together people from the various fields, in order to promote information exchange and interaction among researchers who are interested in various aspects of accessing the content of image and video data. The book provides an overview of the state of the art in content-based image and video retrieval. The topics covered by the chapters are integrated system aspects, as well as techniques from image processing, computer vision, multimedia, databases, graphics, signal processing, and information theory. The book will be of interest to researchers and professionals in the fields of multimedia, visual information (database) systems, computer vision, and information retrieval.