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 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.

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.

Half a centuryago not manypeople had realizedthat a new epoch in the history of homo sapiens had just started. The term "Information Society Age" seems an appropriate name for this epoch. Communication was without a doubt a lever of the conquest of the human race over the rest of the animate world. There is little doubt that the human racebegan when our predecessorsstarted to communicate with each other using language.This highly abstractmeans of communicationwas probably one of the major factors contributing to the evolutionary success of the human race within the animal world. Physically weak and imperfect, humans started to dominate the rest of the world through the creation of communication-based societies where individuals communicated initially to satisfy immediate needs, and then to create, accumulate and process knowledge for future use. The crucial step in the history of humanity was the invention of writing. It is worth noting that writing is a human invention, not a phenomenon resulting from natural evolution. Humans invented writing as a technique for recording speech as well as for storing and facilitating the dissemination of knowledge across the world. Humans continue to be born illiterate, and therefore teaching and conscious supervised learning is necessary to maintain this basic social skill.

This volume is part of the two-volume proceedings of the 19th International Conf- ence on Artificial Neural Networks (ICANN 2009), which was held in Cyprus during September 14-17, 2009. The ICANN conference is an annual meeting sp- sored by the European Neural Network Society (ENNS), in cooperation with the - ternational Neural Network Society (INNS) and the Japanese Neural Network Society (JNNS). ICANN 2009 was technically sponsored by the IEEE Computational Intel- gence Society. This series of conferences has been held annually since 1991 in various European countries and covers the field of neurocomputing, learning systems and related areas. Artificial neural networks provide an information-processing structure inspired by biological nervous systems. They consist of a large number of highly interconnected processing elements, with the capability of learning by example. The field of artificial neural networks has evolved significantly in the last two decades, with active partici- tion from diverse fields, such as engineering, computer science, mathematics, artificial intelligence, system theory, biology, operations research, and neuroscience. Artificial neural networks have been widely applied for pattern recognition, control, optimization, image processing, classification, signal processing, etc.

Welcome to the Second International Conference on Contemporary Computing, which was held in Noida (outskirts of New Delhi), India. Computing is an exciting and evolving area. This conference, which was jointly organized by the Jaypee Institute of Information Technology University, Noida, India and the University of Florida, Gainesville, USA, focused on topics that are of contemporary interest to computer and computational scientists and engineers. The conference had an exciting technical program of 61 papers submitted by - searchers and practitioners from academia, industry and government to advance the algorithmic, systems, applications, and educational aspects of contemporary comp- ing. These papers were selected from 213 submissions (with an overall acceptance rate of around 29%). The technical program was put together by a distinguished int- national Program Committee. The Program Committee was led by the following Track Chairs and Special Session Chairs: Srinivas Aluru, Rajkumar Buyya, Yeh-Ching Chung, Sumeet Dua, Ananth Grama, Sandeep Gupta, Rajeev Kumar and Vir Phoha. I would like to thank the Program Committee, the Track Chairs and Special Session Chairs for their tremendous effort. I would like to thank the General Chairs, Sartaj Sahni and Sanjay Goel for giving me the opportunity to lead the technical program. Sanjay Ranka

The Annual (ICGS) International Conference is an established platform in which se- rity, safety and sustainability issues can be examined from several global perspectives through dialogue between academics, students, government representatives, chief executives, security professionals, and research scientists from the United Kingdom and from around the globe. The 2009 two-day conference focused on the challenges of complexity, rapid pace of change and risk/opportunity issues associated with modern products, systems, s- cial events and infrastructures. The importance of adopting systematic and systemic approaches to the assurance of these systems was emphasized within a special stream focused on strategic frameworks, architectures and human factors. The conference provided an opportunity for systems scientists, assurance researchers, owners, ope- tors and maintainers of large, complex and advanced systems and infrastructures to update their knowledge with the state of best practice in these challenging domains while networking with the leading researchers and solution providers. ICGS3 2009 received paper submissions from more than 20 different countries around the world. Only 28 papers were selected and were presented as full papers. The program also included three keynote lectures by leading researchers, security professionals and government representatives. June 2009 Hamid Jahankhani Ali Hessami Feng Hsu

Overthelastdecades, energyminimizationmethods havebecomeanestablished paradigm to resolve a variety of challenges in the ?elds of computer vision and pattern recognition. While traditional approaches to computer vision were often based on a heuristic sequence of processing steps and merely allowed very l- ited theoretical understanding of the respective methods, most state-of-the-art methods are nowadays based on the concept of computing solutions to a given problem by minimizing respective energies. This volume contains the papers presented at the 7th International Conf- ence on Energy Minimization Methods in Computer Vision and Pattern Rec- nition (EMMCVPR 2009), held at the University of Bonn, Germany, August 24-28, 2009. These papers demonstrate that energy minimization methods have become a mature ?eld of research spanning a broad range of areas from discrete graph theoretic approaches and Markov random ?elds to variational methods and partial di?erential equations. Application areas include image segmentation and tracking, shape optimization and registration, inpainting and image deno- ing, color and texture modeling, statistics and learning. Overall, we received 75 high-quality double-blind submissions. Based on the reviewer recommendations, 36paperswereselectedforpublication,18asoraland18asposterpresentations. Both oral and poster papers were attributed the same number of pages in the conference proceedings. Furthermore, we were delighted that three leading experts from the ?elds of computer vision and energy minimization, namely, Richard Hartley (C- berra, Australia), Joachim Weickert (Saarbruc ] ken, Germany) and Guillermo Sapiro(Minneapolis, USA)agreedtofurtherenrichtheconferencewithinspiring keynote lectures.

The 13th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCI Inter- tional 2009, was held in San Diego, California, USA, July 19-24, 2009, jointly with the Symposium on Human Interface (Japan) 2009, the 8th International Conference on Engineering Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics, the 5th International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction, the Third International Conf- ence on Virtual and Mixed Reality, the Third International Conference on Internati- alization, Design and Global Development, the Third International Conference on Online Communities and Social Computing, the 5th International Conference on Augmented Cognition, the Second International Conference on Digital Human Mod- ing, and the First International Conference on Human Centered Design. A total of 4,348 individuals from academia, research institutes, industry and gove- mental agencies from 73 countries submitted contributions, and 1,397 papers that were judged to be of high scientific quality were included in the program. These papers - dress the latest research and development efforts and highlight the human aspects of the design and use of computing systems. The papers accepted for presentation thoroughly cover the entire field of human-computer interaction, addressing major advances in knowledge and effective use of computers in a variety of application areas.

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 volume brings together the peer-reviewed contributions of the participants at the COST 2102 International Conference on "Cross-Modal Analysis of Speech, Gestures, Gaze and Facial Expressions" held in Prague, Czech Republic, October 15-18, 2008. The conference was sponsored by COST (European Cooperation in the Field of Scientific and Technical Research, www. cost. esf. org/domains_actions/ict) in the - main of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for disseminating the research advances developed within COST Action 2102: "Cross-Modal Analysis of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication" http://cost2102. cs. stir. ac. uk. COST 2102 research networking has contributed to modifying the conventional theoretical approach to the cross-modal analysis of verbal and nonverbal communi- tion changing the concept of face to face communication with that of body to body communication as well as developing the idea of embodied information. Information is no longer the result of a difference in perception and is no longer measured in terms of quantity of stimuli, since the research developed in COST 2102 has proved that human information processing is a nonlinear process that cannot be seen as the sum of the numerous pieces of information available. Considering simply the pieces of inf- mation available, results in a model of the receiver as a mere decoder, and produces a huge simplification of the communication process.

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.

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.

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.

The security issues set by the global digitization of our society have had, and will continue to have, a crucial impact at all levels of our social organization, including, just to mention a few, privacy, economics, environmental policies, national sovereignty, medical environments. The importance of the collaborations in the various ?elds of computer s- ence to solve these problems linked with other sciences and techniques is clearly recognized. Moreover, the collaborative work to bridge the formal theory and practical applications becomes increasingly important and useful. In this context, and since France and Japan have strong academic and ind- trial backgrounds in the theory and practice of the scienti?c challenges set by this digitized world, in 2005 we started a formal French-Japanese collaboration and workshop series on computer security. The three ?rst editions of these French-Japanese Computer Security wo- shops in Tokyo, September 5-7, 2005 and December 4-5, 2006 and in Nancy, March 13-14, 2008 were very fruitful and were accompanied by several imp- tant research exchanges between France and Japan. Because of this success, we launched a call for papers dedicated to computer security from it's foundation to practice, with the goal of gathering together ?nal versions of the rich set of papers and ideas presented at the workshops, yet opening the call to everyone interested in contributing in this context. This v- ume presents the selection of papers arising from this call and this international collaboration.

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 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 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.

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

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."

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.

The Second International Conference on Forensic Applications and Techniques in Telecommunications, Information and Multimedia (e-Forensics 2009) took place in Adelaide, South Australia during January 19-21, 2009, at the Australian National Wine Centre, University of Adelaide. In addition to the peer-reviewed academic papers presented in this volume, the c- ference featured a significant number of plenary contributions from recognized - tional and international leaders in digital forensic investigation. Keynote speaker Andy Jones, head of security research at British Telecom, outlined the emerging challenges of investigation as new devices enter the market. These - clude the impact of solid-state memory, ultra-portable devices, and distributed storage - also known as cloud computing. The plenary session on Digital Forensics Practice included Troy O'Malley, Que- sland Police Service, who outlined the paperless case file system now in use in Que- sland, noting that efficiency and efficacy gains in using the system have now meant that police can arrive at a suspect's home before the suspect! Joseph Razik, represe- ing Patrick Perrot of the Institut de Recherche Criminelle de la Gendarmerie Nati- ale, France, summarized research activities in speech, image, video and multimedia at the IRCGN. The plenary session on The Interaction Between Technology and Law brought a legal perspective to the technological challenges of digital forensic investigation.

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 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.

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.