Statistical pattern recognition relates to the use of statistical techniques for analysing data measurements in order to extract information and make justified decisions. It is a very active area of study and research, which has seen many advances in recent years. Applications such as data mining, web searching, multimedia data retrieval, face recognition, and cursive handwriting recognition, all require robust and efficient pattern recognition techniques.

This third edition provides an introduction to statistical pattern theory and techniques, with material drawn from a wide range of fields, including the areas of engineering, statistics, computer science and the social sciences. The book has been updated to cover new methods and applications, and includes a wide range of techniques such as Bayesian methods, neural networks, support vector machines, feature selection and feature reduction techniques.Technical descriptions and motivations are provided, and the techniques are illustrated using real examples.

"Statistical Pattern Recognition," 3rd Edition: Provides a self-contained introduction to statistical pattern recognition.Includes new material presenting the analysis of complex networks.Introduces readers to methods for Bayesian density estimation.Presents descriptions of new applications in biometrics, security, finance and condition monitoring.Provides descriptions and guidance for implementing techniques, which will be invaluable to software engineers and developers seeking to develop real applicationsDescribes mathematically the range of statistical pattern recognition techniques.Presents a variety of exercises including more extensive computer projects.

The in-depth technical descriptions make the book suitable for senior undergraduate and graduate students in statistics, computer science and engineering. "Statistical Pattern Recognition" is also an excellent reference source for technical professionals. Chapters have been arranged to facilitate implementation of the techniques by software engineers and developers in non-statistical engineering fields.

www.wiley.com/go/statistical_pattern_recognition

This book presents the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Automated Deduction in Geometry, ADG 2004, held at Gainesville, FL, USA in September 2004.

The 12 revised full papers presented aurvey current issues theoretical and methodological topics as well as applications thereof - in particular automated geometry theorem proving, automated geometry problem solving, problems of dynamic geometry, and an object-oriented language for geometric objects.

The interconnected ideas of inductive databases and constraint-based mining are appealing and have the potential to radically change the theory and practice of data mining and knowledge discovery. This book reports on the results of the European IST project "cInQ" (consortium on knowledge discovery by Inductive Queries) and its final workshop entitled Constraint-Based Mining and Inductive Databases organized in Hinterzarten, Germany in March 2004.

These volumes present together a total of 64 revised full papers and 128 revised posters papers. The papers are organized in topical sections on camera calibration, stereo and pose, texture, face recognition, variational methods, tracking, geometry and calibration, lighting and focus, in the first volume. The papers of the second volume cover topics as detection and applications, statistics and kernels, segmentation, geometry and statistics, signal processing, and video processing.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Biometrics, ICB 2006, held in Hong Kong, China in January 2006. The book includes 104 revised full papers covering such areas of biometrics as the face, fingerprint, iris, speech and signature, biometric fusion and performance evaluation, gait, keystrokes, and more. In addition the results of the Face Authentication Competition (FAC 2006) are also announced in this volume.

CSCR, which is the ?rst nationalcenter in the countryin this domain, has many important objectives including distance learning, establishing linkage to premier institutes/industries, organizing specialized courses, as well as conducting f- damental research. The conference proceedings of PReMI-05, containing rigorouslyreviewed - pers, is published by Springer in its prestigious Lecture Notes in Computer S- ence (LNCS) series. Di?erent professional sponsors and funding agencies (both national and international) came forward to support this event for its success. These include, International Association of Pattern Recognition (IAPR); Web IntelligenceConsortium(WIC); Institute ofElectricalandElectronics Engine- ing (IEEE): International Center for Pure and Applied Mathematics (CIMPA), France;Webel, GovernmentofWestBengalITCompany;DepartmentofScience & Technology (DST), India; Council of Scienti?c & Industrial Research (CSIR), India.Toencourageparticipationofbrightstudentsandyoungresearchers, some fellowships were provided. I believe the participants found PReMI-05 an academically memorable and intellectually stimulating event. It enabled young researchers to interact and establish contacts with well-known experts in the ?eld I hope that you have all enjoyed staying in Calcutta (now Kolkata), the city of Joy.

Human Identification Based on Gait is the first book to address gait as a biometric. Biometrics is now in a unique position where it affects most people's lives. This is especially true of "gait," which is one of the most recent biometrics. Recognizing people by the way they walk and run implies analyzing movement which, in turn, implies analyzing sequences of images, thus requiring memory and computational performance that became available only recently. Human Identification Based on Gait introduces developments from distinguished researchers within this relatively new area of biometrics. This book clearly establishes how human gait is biometric.

Human Identification Based on Gait is structured to meet the needs of professionals in industry, as well as advanced-level students in computer science.

CIARP 2005 (10th Iberoamerican Congress on Pattern Recognition, X CIARP) is the 10th event in the series of pioneer congresses on pattern recognition in the Iberoamerican community, which takes place in La Habana, Cuba. As in previous years, X CIARP brought together international scientists to promote and disseminate ongoing research and mathematical methods for pattern recognition, image analysis, and applications in such diverse areas as computer vision, robotics, industry, health, entertainment, space exploration, telecommunications, data mining, document analysis, and natural language processing and recognition, to name a few. Moreover, X CIARP was a forum for scientific research, experience exchange, share of new knowledge and increase in cooperation between research groups in pattern recognition, computer vision and related areas. The 10th Iberoamerican Congress on Pattern Recognition was organized by the Cuban Association for Pattern Recognition (ACRP) and sponsored by the Institute of Cybernetics, Mathematics and Physics (ICIMAF), the Advanced Technologies Application Center (CENATAV), the University of Oriente (UO), the Polytechnic Institute "Jose A Echevarria" (ISPJAE), the Central University of Las Villas (UCLV), the Ciego de Avila University (UNICA), as well as the Center of Technologies Research on Information and Systems (CITIS-UAEH) in Mexico. The conference was also co-sponsored by the Portuguese Association for Pattern Recognition (APRP), the Spanish Association for Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis (AERFAI), the Special Interest Group of the Brazilian Computer Society (SIGPR-SBC), and the Mexican Association for Computer Vision, Neurocomputing and Robotics (MACVNR). X CIARP was endorsed by the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR).

Biometrics: Personal Identification in Networked Society is a comprehensive and accessible source of state-of-the-art information on all existing and emerging biometrics: the science of automatically identifying individuals based on their physiological or behavior characteristics. In particular, the book covers:

- General principles and ideas of designing biometric-based systems and their underlying tradeoffs

- Identification of important issues in the evaluation of biometrics-based systems

- Integration of biometric cues, and the integration of biometrics with other existing technologies

- Assessment of the capabilities and limitations of different biometrics

- The comprehensive examination of biometric methods in commercial use and in research development

- Exploration of some of the numerous privacy and security implications of biometrics

Also included are chapters on face and eye identification, speaker recognition, networking, and other timely technology-related issues. All chapters are written by leading internationally recognized experts from academia and industry.

Biometrics: Personal Identification in Networked Society is an invaluable work for scientists, engineers, application developers, systems integrators, and others working in biometrics.

Automatic and reliable authentication of individuals is becoming an essential part of the modern world, for security and convenience in our life, in our work andin society.Biometrics-basedsystems utilize physiologicalorbehavioralch- acteristics of an individual including the face, iris, ?ngerprint, palmprint, hand, voice, signature, or a combination of them, for this task. We are now seeing increasing interest and practical deployment of biometric systems. TheInternationalWorkshoponBiometricRecognitionSystems(IWBRS2005) was held in conjunction with ICCV 2005, providing an interactive forum for leading biometrics researchersand system designers.A biometric authentication competition (BAC) was conducted by the workshopto track the state-of-the-art biometrics technologies. This volume of workshop proceedings includes 32 papers carefully selected from a total of 130 submissions. The papers address the problems in face, iris, ?ngerprint, palmprint, speech, writing and other biometrics, and contribute new ideastoresearchanddevelopmentofreliableandpracticalsolutionsforbiometric authentication. We would like to express our gratitude to all the contributors, reviewers, and ProgramCommittee and OrganizingCommittee members who made this a very successful workshop. We also wish to acknowledge the Institute of Automation, ChineseAcademyofSciences,andSpringerforsponsoringthisworkshop.Special thanks are due to Miao Hong, Xin Yang, Zhuoshi Wei, Yinghao Cai, Zhaofeng He, Cheng Zhong, Shiqi Yu and Xianchao Qiu for their hard work in workshop organization. We hope you could bene?t from the fruitful workshop to improve the perf- mance of your biometric systems.

During the last 30 years, face recognition and related problems such as face detection/tracking and facial expression recognition have attracted researchers from both the engineering and psychology communities. In addition, extensive research has been carried out to study hand and body gestures. The understanding of how humans perceive these important cues has significant scientific value and extensive applications. For example, human-computer interaction, visual surveillance, and smart video indexing are active application areas. Aiming towards putting such amazing perception capability onto computer systems, researchers have made substantial progress. However, technological challenges still exist in many aspects. Following a format similar to the IEEE International Workshop on Analysis and Modeling of Faces and Gestures (AMFG) 2003, this one-day workshop (AMFG 2005) provided a focused international forum to bring together well-known researchers and research groups to review the status of recognition, analysis and modeling of faces and gestures, to discuss the challenges that we are facing, and to explore future directions. Overall, 30 papers were selected from 90 submitted manuscripts. The topics of these papers range from feature representation, robust recognition, learning, and 3D modeling to psychology. In addition, two invited talks were given, by Prof. Kanade and Dr. Phillips. The technical program was organized into four oral sessions and two poster sessions. This workshop would not have been possible without the timely reviews provided by the members of the Technical Program Committee under a tight schedule. October 2005 Wenyi Zhao Shaogang Gong Xiaoou Tang

Biometric user authentication techniques evoke an enormous interest by science, industry and society. Scientists and developers constantly pursue technology for automated determination or confirmation of the identity of subjects based on measurements of physiological or behavioral traits of humans.

Biometric User Authentication for IT Security: From Fundamentals to Handwriting conveys general principals of passive (physiological traits such as fingerprint, iris, face) and active (learned and trained behavior such as voice, handwriting and gait) biometric recognition techniques to the reader. Unlike other publications in this area that concentrate on passive schemes, this professional book reflects a more comprehensive analysis of one particular active biometric technique: handwriting. Aspects that are thoroughly discussed include sensor characteristic dependency, attack scenarios, and the generation of cryptographic keys from handwriting.

This volume presents the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns (CAIP 2005). This conference - ries started about 20 years ago in Berlin. Initially, the conference served as a forum for meetings between scientists from Western and Eastern-block co- tries. Nowadays, the conference attracts participants from all over the world. The conference gives equal weight to posters and oral presentations, and the selected presentation mode is based on the most appropriate communication medium. The program follows a single-track format, rather than parallel s- sions. Non-overlapping oral and poster sessions ensure that all attendees have the opportunity to interact personally with presenters. As for the numbers, we received a total of 185 submissions. All papers were reviewed by two to four members of the Program Committee. The ?nal selection was carried out by the Conference Chairs. Out of the 185 papers, 65 were - lected for oral presentation and 43 as posters. CAIP is becoming well recognized internationally, and this year's presentations came from 26 di?erent countries. South Korea proved to be the most active scienti?cally with a total of 16 - cepted papers. At this point, we wish to thank the Program Committee and additional referees for their timely and high-quality reviews. The paper s- mission and review procedure was carried out electronically. We also thank the invited speakers Reinhardt Koch and Thomas Vetter for kindly accepting to present invited papers.

It is both an honor and a pleasure to hold the 27th Annual Meeting of the German Association for Pattern Recognition, DAGM 2005, at the Vienna U- versity of Technology, Austria, organized by the Pattern Recognition and Image Processing (PRIP) Group. We received 122 contributions of which we were able to accept 29 as oral presentations and 31 as posters. Each paper received three reviews, upon which decisions were made based on correctness, presentation, technical depth, scienti?c signi?cance and originality. The selection as oral or poster presentation does not signify a quality grading but re?ects attractiveness to the audience which is also re?ected in the order of appearance of papers in these proceedings. The papers are printed in the same order as presented at the symposium and posters are integrated in the corresponding thematic session. In putting these proceedings together, many people played signi?cant roles which we would like to acknowledge. First of all our thanks go to the authors who contributed their work to the symposium. Second, we are grateful for the dedicated work of the 38 members of the Program Committee for their e?ort in evaluating the submitted papers and inprovidingthe necessarydecisionsupport information and the valuable feedback for the authors. Furthermore, the P- gram Committee awarded prizes for the best papers, and we want to sincerely thank the donors. We were honored to have the following three invited speakers at the conf- ence: - Jan P.

This LNCS volume contains the papers presented at the 3rd International C- ferenceonAdvances in PatternRecognition(ICAPR2005)organizedin August, 2005 in the beautiful city of Bath, UK. The conference was ?rst organized in November 1998 in Plymouth, UK and subsequently in March 2001 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The conference encouraged papers that made signi?cant th- reticalandapplication-basedcontributions inpatternrecognition. The emphasis was on an open exchange of ideas and shared learning. The papers submitted to ICAPR 2005 were thoroughly reviewed by up to three referees per paper and less than 40% of the submitted papers were accepted. The papers have been ?nally published as two volumes of LNCS and these are organized under the themes of Pattern Recognition and Data Mining (which included papers from the trackson PatternRecognition Methods, Knowledgeand Learning, and Data Mining), and Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis (which included papers from the Applications track). From the conference technical programme point of view, the ?rst volume contains papers on pattern recognition, data mining, signal processing and OCR/document analysis. The second volume contains - pers from the Workshop on Pattern Recognition for Crime Prevention, Security and Surveillance, Biometrics, Image Processing and Medical Imaging. ICAPR 2005was run in parallel with the InternationalWorkshop on Pattern Recognition for Crime Prevention, Security and Surveillance that was organized onthe22ndofAugust,2005. Thisworkshopbroughttogethera number ofexc- lent papers that focussed on how pattern recognition techniques can be used to developsystemsthathelpwithcrimepreventionanddetection. Onthesameday, a number of tutorials were also organized

This LNCS volume contains the papers presented at the 3rd International C- ferenceonAdvances in PatternRecognition(ICAPR2005)organizedin August, 2005 in the beautiful city of Bath, UK. The conference was ?rst organized in November 1998 in Plymouth, UK and subsequently in March 2001 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The conference encouraged papers that made signi?cant th- reticalandapplication-basedcontributions inpatternrecognition. The emphasis was on an open exchange of ideas and shared learning. The papers submitted to ICAPR 2005 were thoroughly reviewed by up to three referees per paper and less than 40% of the submitted papers were accepted. The papers have been ?nally published as two volumes of LNCS and these are organized under the themes of Pattern Recognition and Data Mining (which included papers from the trackson PatternRecognition Methods, Knowledgeand Learning, and Data Mining), and Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis (which included papers from the Applications track). From the conference technical programme point of view, the ?rst volume contains papers on pattern recognition, data mining, signal processing and OCR/document analysis. The second volume contains - pers from the Workshop on Pattern Recognition for Crime Prevention, Security and Surveillance, Biometrics, Image Processing and Medical Imaging. ICAPR 2005was run in parallel with the InternationalWorkshop on Pattern Recognition for Crime Prevention, Security and Surveillance that was organized onthe22ndofAugust,2005. Thisworkshopbroughttogethera number ofexc- lent papers that focussed on how pattern recognition techniques can be used to developsystemsthathelpwithcrimepreventionanddetection. Onthesameday, a number of tutorials were also organized

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 refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Audio- and Video-Based Biometric Person Authentication, AVBPA 2005, held in Hilton Rye Town, NY, USA, in July 2005.

The 66 revised oral papers and 50 revised poster papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers discuss all aspects of biometrics including iris, fingerprint, face, palm print, gait, gesture, speaker, and signature; theoretical and algorithmic issues are dealt with as well as systems issues. The industrial side of biometrics is evident from presentations on smart cards, wireless devices, and architectural and implementation aspects.

The computational paradigm considered here is a conceptual, theoretical and formal framework situated above machines and living creatures (two instant- tions), su?ciently solid, and still non-exclusive, that allows us: 1. tohelpneuroscientiststoformulateintentions, questions, experiments, me- ods and explanation mechanisms assuming that neural circuits are the p- chological support of calculus; 2. to help scientists and engineers from the ?elds of arti?cial intelligence (AI) and knowledge engineering (KE) to model, formalize and program the c- putable part of human knowledge; 3. to establish an interaction framework between natural system computation (NSC) and arti?cial system computation (ASC) in both directions, from ASC to NSC (in computational neuroscience), and from NSC to ASC (in bioinspired computation). With these global purposes, we organized IWINAC 2005, the 1st International Work Conference on the Interplay Between Natural and Arti?cial Computation, whichtookplaceinLasPalmasdeGranCanaria, CanaryIslands(Spain), during June 15 18, 2005, trying to contribute to both directions of the interplay: I: From Arti?cial to Natural Computation. What can computation, arti?cial intelligence (AI) and knowledge engineering (KE) contribute to the und- standing of the nervous system, cognitive processes and social behavior? This is the scope of computational neuroscience and cognition, which uses the computational paradigm to model and improve our understanding of natural scienc

"Intelligent systems are those which produce intelligent o?springs." AI researchers have been focusing on developing and employing strong methods that are capable of solving complex real-life problems. The 18th International Conference on Industrial & Engineering Applications of Arti?cial Intelligence & Expert Systems (IEA/AIE 2005) held in Bari, Italy presented such work performed by many scientists worldwide. The Program Committee selected long papers from contributions presenting more complete work and posters from those reporting ongoing research. The Committee enforced the rule that only original and unpublished work could be considered for inclusion in these proceedings. The Program Committee selected 116 contributions from the 271 subm- ted papers which cover the following topics: arti?cial systems, search engines, intelligent interfaces, knowledge discovery, knowledge-based technologies, na- ral language processing, machine learning applications, reasoning technologies, uncertainty management, applied data mining, and technologies for knowledge management. The contributions oriented to the technological aspects of AI and the quality of the papers are witness to a research activity clearly aimed at consolidating the theoretical results that have already been achieved. The c- ference program also included two invited lectures, by Katharina Morik and Roberto Pieraccini. Manypeoplecontributedindi?erentwaystothesuccessoftheconferenceand to this volume. The authors who continue to show their enthusiastic interest in applied intelligence research are a very important part of our success. We highly appreciate the contribution of the members of the Program Committee, as well as others who reviewed all the submitted papers with e?ciency and dedication.

The computational paradigm considered here is a conceptual, theoretical and formal framework situated above machines and living creatures (two instant- tions), su?ciently solid, and still non-exclusive, that allows us: 1. tohelpneuroscientiststoformulateintentions, questions, experiments, me- ods and explanation mechanisms assuming that neural circuits are the p- chological support of calculus; 2. to help scientists and engineers from the ?elds of arti?cial intelligence (AI) and knowledge engineering (KE) to model, formalize and program the c- putable part of human knowledge; 3. to establish an interaction framework between natural system computation (NSC) and arti?cial system computation (ASC) in both directions, from ASC to NSC (in computational neuroscience), and from NSC to ASC (in bioinspired computation). With these global purposes, we organized IWINAC 2005, the 1st International Work Conference on the Interplay Between Natural and Arti?cial Computation, whichtookplaceinLasPalmasdeGranCanaria, CanaryIslands(Spain), during June 15 18, 2005, trying to contribute to both directions of the interplay: I: From Arti?cial to Natural Computation. What can computation, arti?cial intelligence (AI) and knowledge engineering (KE) contribute to the und- standing of the nervous system, cognitive processes and social behavior? This is the scope of computational neuroscience and cognition, which uses the computational paradigm to model and improve our understanding of natural scienc

The 16th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching was held on Jeju Island, Korea on June 19-22, 2005. Previous meetings were held in Paris, London, Tucson, Padova, Asilomar, Helsinki, Laguna Beach, Aarhus, Piscataway, Warwick, Montreal, Jerusalem, Fukuoka, Morelia, and Istanbul over the years 1990-2004. In response to the call for papers, CPM 2005 received a record number of 129papers.Eachsubmissionwasreviewedbyatleast threeProgramCommittee members with the assistance of external referees. Since there were many hi- quality papers, the Program Committee's task was extremely di?cult. Through an extensive discussion the Program Committee accepted 37 of the submissions tobepresentedattheconference.Theyconstituteoriginalresearchcontributions in combinatorial pattern matching and its applications. Inadditiontotheselectedpapers, CPM2005hadthreeinvitedpresentations, by Esko Ukkonen from the University of Helsinki, Ming Li from the University of Waterloo, and Naftali Tishby from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. We would like to thank all Program Committee members and external r- erees for their excellent work, especially given the demanding time constraints; they gave the conference its distinctive character. We also thank all who s- mitted papers for consideration; they all contributed to the high quality of the conference. Finally, we thank the Organizing Committee members and the graduates- dents who worked hard to put in place the logistical arrangements of the c- ference. It is their dedicated contribution that made the conference possible and enjoyable

The belief that a committee of people make better decisions than any individual is widely held and appreciated. We also understand that, for this to be true, the members of the committee have to be simultaneously competent and comp- mentary. This intuitive notion holds true for committees of data sources (such as sensors) and models (such as classi?ers). The substantial current research in the areas of data fusion and model fusion focuses on ensuring that the di?- ent sources provide useful information but nevertheless complement one another to yield better results than any source would on its own. During the 1990s, a variety of schemes in classi?er fusion, which is the focus of this workshop, were developed under many names in di?erent scienti?c communities such as machine learning, pattern recognition, neural networks, and statistics. The previous ?ve workshops on Multiple Classi?er Systems (MCS) were themselves exercises in information fusion, with the goal of bringing the di?erent scienti?c commu- ties together, providing each other with di?erent perspectives on this fascinating topic, and aiding cross-fertilization of ideas. These ?ve workshops achieved this goal, demonstrating signi? cant advances in the theory, algorithms, and appli- tions of multiple classi?er systems. Followingits?vepredecessorspublishedbySpringer,thisvolumecontainsthe proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Multiple Classi?er Systems (MCS2005)heldattheEmbassySuitesinSeaside,California,USA,June13-15, 2005. Forty-two papers were selected by the Scienti?c Committee, and they were organized into the following sessions: Boosting, Combination Methods, Design of Ensembles, Performance Analysis, and Applications.

Automatic person authentication, the identification and verification of an individual as such, has increasingly been acknowledged as a significant aspect of various security applications. Various recognition and identification systems have been based on biometrics utilizing biometric features such as fingerprint, face, retina scans, iris patterns, hand geometry, DNA traces, gait, and others.

This book originates from an international summer school on biometrics, held in Alghero, Italy, in June 2003. The seven revised tutorial lectures by leading researchers introduce the reader to biometrics-based person authentication, fingerprint recognition, gait recognition, various aspects of face recognition and face detection, topologies for biometric recognition, and hand detection. Also included are the four best selected student papers, all dealing with face recognition.

IbPRIA 2005 (Iberian Conference on Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis) was the second of a series of conferences jointly organized every two years by the Portuguese and Spanish Associations for Pattern Recognition (APRP, AERFAI), with the support of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR). This year, IbPRIA was hosted by the Institute for Systems and Robotics and the Geo-systems Center of the Instituto Superior Tecn ico and it was held in Estoril, Por- gal. It provided the opportunity to bring together researchers from all over the world to discuss some of the most recent advances in pattern recognition and all areas of video, image and signal processing. There was a very positive response to the Call for Papers for IbPRIA 2005. We - ceived 292 full papers from 38 countries and 170 were accepted for presentation at the conference. The high quality of the scienti?c program of IbPRIA 2005 was due ?rst to the authors who submitted excellent contributions and second to the dedicated colla- ration of the international Program Committee and the other researchers who reviewed the papers. Each paper was reviewed by two reviewers, in a blind process. We would like to thank all the authors for submitting their contributions and for sharing their - search activities. We are particularly indebted to the Program Committee members and to all the reviewers for their precious evaluations, which permitted us to set up this publication."