The two-volume set LNCS 5601 and LNCS 5602 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Work-Conference on the Interplay between Natural and Artificial Computation, IWINAC 2009, held in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, in June 2009.

The 108 revised papers presented are thematically divided into two volumes. The first volume includes papers relating the most recent collaborations with Professor Mira and contributions mainly related with theoretical, conceptual and methodological aspects linking AI and knowledge engineering with neurophysiology, clinics and cognition. The second volume contains all the contributions connected with biologically inspired methods and techniques for solving AI and knowledge engineering problems in different application domains.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Vision and Graphics, ICCVG 2008, held in Warsaw, Poland, in November 2008.

The 48 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on image processing, image quality assessment, geometrical models of objects and scenes, motion analysis, visual navigation and active vision, image and video coding, virtual reality and multimedia applications, biomedical applications, practical applications of pattern recognition, computer animation, visualization and graphical data presentation.

These proceedings are a record of the Multiple Classi?er Systems Workshop, MCS 2009, held at the University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland in June 2009. Being the eighth in a well-established series of meetings providing an inter- tional forum for the discussion of issues in multiple classi?er system design, the workshop achieved its objective of bringing together researchers from diverse communities (neural networks, pattern recognition, machine learning and stat- tics) concerned with this research topic. From more than 70 submissions, the Program Committee selected 54 papers to create an interesting scienti?c program. The special focus of MCS 2009 was on the application of multiple classi?er systems in remote sensing. This part- ular application uses multiple classi?ers for raw data fusion, feature level fusion and decision level fusion. In addition to the excellent regular submission in the technical program, outstanding contributions were made by invited speakers Melba Crawford from Purdue University and Zhi-Hua Zhou of Nanjing Univ- sity. Papers of these talks are included in these workshop proceedings. With the workshop'sapplicationfocusbeingonremotesensing, Prof.Crawford'sexpertise in the use of multiple classi?cation systems in this context made the discussions on this topic at MCS 2009 particularly fruitful.

Motion analysis is central to both human and machine vision. It involves the interpretation of image data over time and is crucial for a range of motion tasks suchasobstacledetection,depthestimation,videoanalysis,sceneinterpretation, videocompressionandotherapplications. Motionanalysisis unsolvedbecauseit requires modeling of the complicated relationships between the observed image data and the motion of objects and motion patterns (e. g. , falling rain) in the visual scene. The Dagstuhl Seminar 08291 on Statistical and Geometrical Approaches to Visual Motion Analysis was held during July 13-18, 2008 at the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl, near Wadern in G- many. The workshop focused on critical aspects of motion analysis, including motion segmentation, the modeling of motion patterns and the di?erent te- niques used. These techniques include variationalapproaches,level set methods, probabilistic models, graph cut approaches, factorization techniques, and neural networks. All these techniques can be subsumed within statistical and geomet- cal frameworks. We further involved experts in the study of human and primate vision. Primatevisualsystemsareextremely sophisticatedat processingmotion, thus there is much to be learnt from studying them. In particular, we discussed how to relate the computational models of primate visual systems to those - veloped for machine vision. In total, 15 papers were accepted for these proceedings after the workshop. We werecarefulto ensurea high standardof qualityfor the accepted papers. All submissions were double-blind reviewed by at least two experts.

This book contains 71 original, scienti?c articles that address state-of-the-art researchrelatedto scale space and variationalmethods for image processing and computer vision. Topics covered in the book range from mathematical analysis of both established and new models, fast numerical methods, image analysis, segmentation, registration, surface and shape construction and processing, to real applications in medical imaging and computer vision. The ideas of scale spaceandvariationalmethodsrelatedtopartialdi?erentialequationsarecentral concepts. The papers re?ect the newest developments in these ?elds and also point to the latest literature. All the papers were submitted to the Second International Conference on Scale Space and Variational Methods in Computer Vision, which took place in Voss, Norway, during June 1-5, 2009. The papers underwent a peer review process similar to that of high-level journals in the ?eld. We thank the authors, the Scienti?c Committee, the Program Committee and the reviewers for their hard work and helpful collaboration. Their contribution has been crucial for the e?cient processing of this book, and for the success of the conference.

This volume contains the papers presented at the 7th IAPR-TC-15 Workshop onGraph-BasedRepresentationsinPatternRecognition- GbR2009.Thewo- shop was held in Venice, Italy between May 26-28, 2009. The previous wo- shops in the series were held in Lyon, France (1997), Haindorf, Austria (1999), Ischia, Italy (2001), York, UK (2003), Poitiers, France (2005), and Alicante, Spain (2007). The Technical Committee (TC15, http: //www.greyc.ensicaen.fr/iapr-tc15/) of the IAPR (International Association for Pattern Recognition) was founded in order to federate and to encourage research work at the intersection of pattern recognition and graph theory. Among its activities, the TC15 encourages the organization of special graph sessions in many computer vision conferences and organizes the biennial GbR Workshop. The scienti?c focus of these workshops coversresearchin pattern recognition and image analysis within the graph theory framework. This workshop series traditionally provide a forum for presenting and discussing research results and applications in the intersection of pattern recognition, image analysis and graph theory

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference On Smart Homes and and Health Telematics, ICOST 2009, held in Tours, France, in July 2009. The 27 revised full papers and 20 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on cognitive assistance and chronic diseases management; ambient living systems; service continuity and context awareness; user modeling and human-machine interaction; ambient intelligence modeling and privacy issues, human behavior and activities monitoring.

ICIAR 2009, the International Conference on Image Analysis and Recognition, held in Halifax, Canada July 6-8, 2009, was the sixth in the ICIAR series of - nual conferences alternating between Europe and North America. ICIAR 2004 was held in Porto, Portugal, ICIAR 2005 in Toronto, Canada, ICIAR 2006 in P ovoa do Varzim, Portugal, ICIAR 2007 in Montreal, Canada, and ICIAR 2008 in Pov oa do Varzim, Portugal. The idea of o?ering these conferences came as a result of discussion between researchers in Portugal and Canada to enco- age collaboration and exchange, mainly between these two countries, but also with the open participationof other countries, addressing recent advances in the theory, methodology and applications of image analysis and recognition. For ICIAR 2009, wereceiveda total of 164full papersfrom 34 countries. The review process was carried out by the Program Committee members and other reviewers; all are experts in various image analysis and recognition areas. Each paper wasreviewedbyatleasttwo reviewers, andalsocheckedbythe conference Co-chairs. In all, 93 papers were ?nally accepted (45 oral presentations, and 48 posters) and appear in these proceedings. This year, di?erent from previous years, we opted for single sessions rather than parallel sessions to encourage participation in all sessions. The high quality of the papers is attributed ?rst to theauthors, andsecondtothequalityofthereviewsprovidedbytheexperts. We would like to thank the authors for responding to our call for papers, some are returningauthorswhoattendedpreviouseditionsofthe conferenceandsomeare new. We would like to sincerely thank the reviewers for their careful evaluation andtheexcellentfeedbacktheyprovidedtothe authors."

This book constitutes the refeered proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Information Processing in Medical Imaging, IPMI 2009, held in Williamsburg, VA, USA, in July 2009

The 26 revised full papers and 33 revised poster papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 150 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on diffusion imaging, PET imaging, image registration, functional networks, space curves, tractography, microscopy, exploratory analyses, features and detection, image guided surgery, shape analysis, motion, and segmentation and validation.

This volume collects the papers accepted for presentation atMIRAGE 2009. TheMIRAGE conference is continuing to receive international recognition, with this year's presentations coming from 25 countries despite the large wor- wide ?nancial crisis. This time Asia submitted far fewer papers than previously and fewer than Europe. France provedto be the most active scienti?cally with a total of 16 submitted papers. Germany came second (10 submitted papers) and China third (8 papers). We received a total of 83 submissions and accepted 41 as oral presentations, over the three-day event. All papers were reviewed by three to four members of theProgramCommittee.The?nalselectionwasmadebytheConferenceChairs. At this point, we wish to thank the Program Committee and additional referees for their timely and high-quality reviews. We also thank the invited speakers Luc Van Gool, Frank Multon and Raquel Urtasun for kindly accepting to present very interesting talks. mirage 2009 was organizedbyinria Rocquencourt and took place atinria, Rocquencourt, close to Versailles. We believe that the conference proved to be a stimulating experience for all. March 2009 A. Gagalowicz W. Philips Organization Mirage 2009 was organized byinria and Ghent University.

This textbook presents mathematical models in bioinformatics and describes biological problems that inspire the computer science tools used to manage the enormous data sets involved. The first part of the book covers mathematical and computational methods, with practical applications presented in the second part. The mathematical presentation avoids unnecessary formalism, while remaining clear and precise. The book closes with a thorough bibliography, reaching from classic research results to very recent findings. This volume is suited for a senior undergraduate or graduate course on bioinformatics, with a strong focus on mathematical and computer science background.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Genetic Programming, EuroGP 2009, held in Tubingen, Germany, in April 2009 colocated with the Evo* 2009 events.

The 21 revised plenary papers and 9 revised poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 57 submissions. A great variety of topics are presented reflecting the current state of research in the field of genetic programming, including the latest work on representations, theory, operators and analysis, feature selection, generalisation, coevolution and numerous applications.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th European Conference on Evolutionary Computation, Machine Learning and Data Mining in Bioinformatics, EvoBIO 2009, held in Tubingen, Germany, in April 2009 colocated with the Evo* 2009 events.

The 17 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 44 submissions. EvoBio is the premiere European event for experts in computer science meeting with experts in bioinformatics and the biological sciences, all interested in the interface between evolutionary computation, machine learning, data mining, bioinformatics, and computational biology. Topics addressed by the papers include biomarker discovery, cell simulation and modeling, ecological modeling, uxomics, gene networks, biotechnology, metabolomics, microarray analysis, phylogenetics, protein interactions, proteomics, sequence analysis and alignment, as well as systems biology.

Attention has represented a core scienti?c topic in the design of AI-enabled systems in the last few decades. Today, in the ongoing debate, design, and c- putationalmodelingofarti?cialcognitivesystems, attentionhasgainedacentral position as a focus of research. For instance, attentional methods are considered in investigating the interfacing of sensory and cognitive information processing, for the organization of behaviors, and for the understanding of individual and social cognition in infant development. Whilevisualcognitionplaysacentralroleinhumanperception, ?ndingsfrom neuroscience and experimental psychology have provided strong evidence about the perception-action nature of cognition. The embodied nature of senso- motor intelligence requires a continuous and focused interplay between the c- trolofmotoractivitiesandtheinterpretationoffeedbackfromperceptualmod- ities. Decision making about the selection of information from the incoming sensory stream - in tune with contextual processing on a current task and an agent's global objectives - becomes a further challenging issue in attentional control. Attention must operate at interfaces between a bottom-up-driven world interpretationandtop-down-driveninformationselection, thusactingatthecore of arti?cial cognitive systems. These insights have already induced changes in AI-related disciplines, such as the design of behavior-based robot control and the computational modeling of animats. Today, the development of enabling technologiessuch as autonomous robotic systems, miniaturizedmobile-evenwearable-sensors, andambientintelligence systems involves the real-time analysis of enormous quantities of data. These data have to be processed in an intelligent way to provide "on time delivery" of the required relevant information. Knowledge has to be applied about what needs to be attended to, and when, and what to do in a meaningful sequence, in correspondence with visual feedback.

This volume brings together the peer-reviewed contributions of the participants at the COST 2102 and euCognition International Training School on "Multimodal Signals: C- nitive and Algorithmic Issues" held in Vietri sul Mare, Salerno, Italy, April 22 -26, 2008. The school was sponsored by COST (European Cooperation in the Field of Scientific and Technical Research, www.cost.esf.org) in the domain of Information and Communi- tion Technologies (ICT) for disseminating the advances of the research activities developed within Action 2102: "Cross-Modal Analysis of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication" (www.cost.esf.org/domains_actions/ict/Actions/Verbal_and_Non- verbal _Communication) and by euCognition: The European Network for Advancement of Artificial Cognitive Systems (www.euCognition.org). COST Action 2102, in its second year of life, brought together about 60 European and 6 overseas scientific laboratories whose aim is to develop interactive dialogue systems and intelligent virtual avatars graphically embodied in a 2D and/or 3D int- active virtual world, able to interact intelligently with the environment, other avatars, and particularly with human users. The main theme of the school was to investigate the mathematical and psycholo- cal tools for modelling human-machine interaction through access to a graded series of tasks for measuring the amount of adjustment (as well as intelligence and achie- ment) needed for introducing new concepts in the information communication te- nology domain in order to develop adaptive, socially enabled and human-centered automatic systems able to serve remote applications in medicine, learning, care, re- bilitation, and for accessibility to work, employment, and information.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Advanced Concepts for Intelligent Vision Systems, ACIVS 2009, held in Bordeaux, France in September/October 2009.

The 43 revised full papers and 25 posters presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 115 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on technovision, fundamental mathematical techniques, image processing, coding and filtering, image and video analysis, computer vision, tracking, color, multispectral and special-purpose imaging, medical imaging, and biometrics.

In den letzten Jahren hat sich der Workshop Bildverarbeitung fur die Medizin durch erfolgreiche Veranstaltungen etabliert. Ziel ist auch 2009 wieder die Darstellung aktueller Forschungsergebnisse und die Vertiefung der Gesprache zwischen Wissenschaftlern, Industrie und Anwendern. Die Beitrage dieses Bandes - einige in englischer Sprache - behandeln alle Bereiche der medizinischen Bildverarbeitung, insbesondere Bildgebung, CAD, Segmentierung, Bildanalyse, Visualisierung und Animation, Roboter und Manipulatoren, Chirurgische Simulatoren, Diagnose, Therapieplanung sowie deren klinische Anwendungen."

The International Gesture Workshop is an interdisciplinary event where researchers working on human gesture-based communication present advanced research currently inprogressandexchangeideasongestureacrossmultidisciplinaryscienti?cdisciplines. This workshop encompasses all fundamental aspects of gestural studies in the ?eld of human-computer interaction and simulation, including all multifaceted issues of m- elling, analysis and synthesis of human gesture, encompassing hand and body gestures andfacial expressions. A focusof these eventsis a sharedinterest in usinggesturein the contextofsign languageanalysis, understandingandsynthesis. Anotherstreamof int- est is the user-centric approach of considering gesture in multimodal human-computer interaction, in the framework of the integration of such interaction into the natural - vironment of users. In addition to welcoming submission of work by established - searchers, it is the tradition of the GW series of workshops to encourage submission of student work at various stages of completion, enabling a broader dissemination of ?nished or on-going novel work and the exchangeof experiences in a multidisciplinary environment. Gesture Workshop 2007 (GW 2007) was the 7th European Gesture Workshop in the GW series initiated in 1996. Since that date, the Gesture Workshops have been held roughly every second year, with fully reviewed proceedings typically published by Springer. GW 2007 was organized by ADETTI at ISCTE-Lisbon University - stitute, during May 23-25, 2007. In GW 2007, from the 53 contributions that were received, 15 high-quality full papers were accepted, along with 16 short papers and 10 posters and demos, showing on-going promising gesture research. Two brilliant keynote speakers honored the event with their presentations.

A key driving factor for biometrics is the widespread national and international depl- ment of biometric systems that has been initiated in the past two years and is about to accelerate. While nearly all current biometric deployments are government-led and pr- cipally concerned with national security and border control scenarios, it is now apparent that the widespread availability of biometrics in everyday life will also spin out an ev- increasing number of (private) applications in other domains. Crucial to this vision is the management of the user's identity, which does not only imply the creation and update of a biometric template, but requires the development of instruments to properly handle all the data and operations related to the user identity. COST Action 2101 on Biometrics for Identity Documents and Smart Cards has - erated as a valuable and effective platform for close collaboration of European sci- tists from academia and industry researching biometrics for identity documents and smartcards. This has led to the continuous advances achieved in various classes of biometrics and their implementations in the identity management domain. These c- tributions to knowledge in this field were first presented at the First European Wo- shop on Biometrics and Identity Management (BioID 2008) organized in Roskilde, Denmark during May 7-9, 2008.

The chapters in this volume were presented at the July-August 2008 NATO Advanced Study Institute on Unexploded Ordnance Detection and Mitigation. The conference was held at the beautiful Il Ciocco resort near Lucca, in the glorious Tuscany region of northern Italy. For the ninth time we gathered at this idyllic spot to explore and extend the reciprocity between mathematics and engineering. The dynamic interaction between world-renowned scientists from the usually disparate communities of pure mathematicians and applied scientists which occurred at our eight previous ASI's continued at this meeting. The detection and neutralization of unexploded ordnance (UXO) has been of major concern for very many decades; at least since the First World war. UXO continues to be the subject of intensive research in many ?elds of science, incl- ing mathematics, signal processing (mainly radar and sonar) and chemistry. While today's headlines emphasize the mayhem resulting from the placement of imp- vised explosive devices (IEDs), humanitarian landmine clearing continues to draw signi?cant global attention as well. In many countries of the world, landmines threaten the population and hinder reconstruction and fast, ef?cient utilization of large areas of the mined land in the aftermath of military con?icts.

This book includes selected papers from VISIGRAPP 2007, the Joint Conference on Computer Vision and Computer Graphics, comprising two component conferences, namely, the International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications (VISAPP) and the International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and App- cations (GRAPP), held in Barcelona, Spain, during March 8-11, 2007. We received quite a high number of paper submissions: 382 in total for both conf- ences. We had contributions from more than 50 countries in all five continents. This confirms the success and global dimension of these jointly organized conferences. After a rigorous double-blind evaluation method, a total of 78 submissions were accepted as full papers. From those, 18 got selected for inclusion in this book. To ensure the sci- tific quality of the contributions, these were selected from papers that were evaluated with the highest scores by the VISIGRAPP Program Committee members and then they were extended and revised by the authors. Special thanks go to all contributors and re- rees, without whom this book would not have been possible. VISIGRAPP 2007 included four invited keynote lectures, presented by internati- ally recognized researchers. The presentations represented an important contribution to increasing the overall quality of the conference. We would like to express our - preciation to all invited keynote speakers, in alphabetical order: Jake K. Aggarwal (The University of Texas at Austin/USA), Andre Gagalowicz (INRIA/France), Wo- gang Heidrich (University of British Columbia/Canada), Mel Slater (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya/Spain)."

This volume in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series contains 98 papers presented at the S+SSPR 2008 workshops. S+SSPR 2008 was the sixth time that the SPR and SSPR workshops organized by Technical Committees, TC1 and TC2, of the International Association for Pattern Rec- nition (IAPR) wereheld as joint workshops. S+SSPR 2008was held in Orlando, Florida, the family entertainment capital of the world, on the beautiful campus of the University of Central Florida, one of the up and coming metropolitan universities in the USA. S+SSPR 2008 was held during December 4-6, 2008 only a few days before the 19th International Conference on Pattern Recog- tion(ICPR2008), whichwasheldin Tampa, onlytwo hoursawayfromOrlando, thus giving the opportunity of both conferences to attendees to enjoy the many attractions o?ered by two neighboring cities in the state of Florida. SPR 2008 and SSPR 2008 received a total of 175 paper submissions from many di?erent countries around the world, thus giving the workshop an int- national clout, as was the case for past workshops. This volume contains 98 accepted papers: 56 for oral presentations and 42 for poster presentations. In addition to parallel oral sessions for SPR and SSPR, there was also one joint oral session with papers of interest to both the SPR and SSPR communities. A recent trend that has emerged in the pattern recognition and machine lea- ing research communities is the study of graph-based methods that integrate statistical andstructural approache

The First Asian Conference on Machine Learning (ACML 2009) was held at Nanjing, China during November 2-4, 2009.This was the ?rst edition of a series of annual conferences which aim to provide a leading international forum for researchers in machine learning and related ?elds to share their new ideas and research ?ndings. This year we received 113 submissions from 18 countries and regions in Asia, Australasia, Europe and North America. The submissions went through a r- orous double-blind reviewing process. Most submissions received four reviews, a few submissions received ?ve reviews, while only several submissions received three reviews. Each submission was handled by an Area Chair who coordinated discussions among reviewers and made recommendation on the submission. The Program Committee Chairs examined the reviews and meta-reviews to further guarantee the reliability and integrity of the reviewing process. Twenty-nine - pers were selected after this process. To ensure that important revisions required by reviewers were incorporated into the ?nal accepted papers, and to allow submissions which would have - tential after a careful revision, this year we launched a "revision double-check" process. In short, the above-mentioned 29 papers were conditionally accepted, and the authors were requested to incorporate the "important-and-must"re- sionssummarizedbyareachairsbasedonreviewers'comments.Therevised?nal version and the revision list of each conditionally accepted paper was examined by the Area Chair and Program Committee Chairs. Papers that failed to pass the examination were ?nally rejected.

This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th Iberian Conference on Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis, IbPRIA 2009, held in Povoa de Varzim, Portugal in June 2009.

The 33 revised full papers and 29 revised poster papers presented together with 3 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 106 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on computer vision, image analysis and processing, as well as pattern recognition.

The 8th edition of the International Symposium on Web and Wireless Geograp- cal Information Systems (W2GIS 2008) was held in December 2008, in the vibrant city of Shanghai, China. This annual symposium aims at providing a forum for discussing advances on recent developments and research results in the ?eld of Web and wireless geographical information systems. Promoted from workshop to s- posium in 2005, W2GIS now represents a prestigious event within this dynamic research community. These proceedings contain the papers selected for presen- tion at this international event. For the 2008 edition, we received 38 submissions from 16 countries. All subm- ted papers were related to topics of interest to the symposium. Each paper received three reviews. Based on these reviews, 14 papers were selected for presentation and inclusion in the proceedings. The accepted papers are all of excellent quality and cover topics that range from mobile networks and location-based services, to contextual representation and mapping, to geospatial Web techniques, to object tracking in Web and mobile environments. We wish to thank all authors that contributed to this symposium for the high quality of their papers and presentations. Our sincere thanks go to Springer's LNCS team. We would also like to acknowledge and thank the Program C- mittee members for the quality and timeliness of their reviews. Finally, many thanks to the Steering Committee members for providing continuous support and advice.