This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Chinese Conference on Image and Graphics Technologies and Applications, IGTA 2013, held in Beijing, China, in April 2013. The 40 papers and posters presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 89 submissions. The papers address issues such as the generation of new ideas, new approaches, new techniques, new applications and new evaluation in the field of image processing and graphics.

The field of machine learning has matured to the point where many sophisticated learning approaches can be applied to practical applications. Thus it is of critical importance that researchers have the proper tools to evaluate learning approaches and understand the underlying issues. This book examines various aspects of the evaluation process with an emphasis on classification algorithms. The authors describe several techniques for classifier performance assessment, error estimation and resampling, obtaining statistical significance as well as selecting appropriate domains for evaluation. They also present a unified evaluation framework and highlight how different components of evaluation are both significantly interrelated and interdependent. The techniques presented in the book are illustrated using R and WEKA, facilitating better practical insight as well as implementation. Aimed at researchers in the theory and applications of machine learning, this book offers a solid basis for conducting performance evaluations of algorithms in practical settings.

This book focuses on use of voice as a biometric measure for personal authentication. In particular, "Speaker Recognition" covers two approaches in speaker authentication: speaker verification (SV) and verbal information verification (VIV). The SV approach attempts to verify a speaker's identity based on his/her voice characteristics while the VIV approach validates a speaker's identity through verification of the content of his/her utterance(s). SV and VIV can be combined for new applications. This is still a new research topic with significant potential applications. The book provides with a broad overview of the recent advances in speaker authentication while giving enough attention to advanced and useful algorithms and techniques. It also provides a step by step introduction to the current state of the speaker authentication technology, from the fundamental concepts to advanced algorithms. We will also present major design methodologies and share our experience in developing real and successful speaker authentication systems. Advanced and useful topics and algorithms are selected with real design examples and evaluation results. Special attention is given to the topics related to improving overall system robustness and performances, such as robust endpoint detection, fast discriminative training theory and algorithms, detection-based decoding, sequential authentication, etc. For example, the sequential authentication was developed based on statistical sequential testing theory. By adding enough subtests, a speaker authentication system can achieve any accuracy requirement. The procedure of designing the sequential authentication will be presented. For any presented technique, we will provide experimental results to validate the usefulness. We will also highlight the important developments in academia, government, and industry, and outline a few open issues. As the methodologies developed in speaker authentication span several diverse fields, the tutorial book provides an introductory forum for a broad spectrum of researchers and developers from different areas to acquire the knowledge and skills to engage in the interdisciplinary fields of user authentication, biometrics, speech and speaker recognition, multimedia, and dynamic pattern recognition.

Cross disciplinary biometric systems help boost the performance of the conventional systems. Not only is the recognition accuracy significantly improved, but also the robustness of the systems is greatly enhanced in the challenging environments, such as varying illumination conditions. By leveraging the cross disciplinary technologies, face recognition systems, fingerprint recognition systems, iris recognition systems, as well as image search systems all benefit in terms of recognition performance. Take face recognition for an example, which is not only the most natural way human beings recognize the identity of each other, but also the least privacy-intrusive means because people show their face publicly every day. Face recognition systems display superb performance when they capitalize on the innovative ideas across color science, mathematics, and computer science (e.g., pattern recognition, machine learning, and image processing). The novel ideas lead to the development of new color models and effective color features in color science; innovative features from wavelets and statistics, and new kernel methods and novel kernel models in mathematics; new discriminant analysis frameworks, novel similarity measures, and new image analysis methods, such as fusing multiple image features from frequency domain, spatial domain, and color domain in computer science; as well as system design, new strategies for system integration, and different fusion strategies, such as the feature level fusion, decision level fusion, and new fusion strategies with novel similarity measures.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 25th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching, CPM 2014, held in Moscow, Russia, in June 2014. The 28 revised full papers presented together with 5 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 54 submissions. The papers address issues of searching and matching strings and more complicated patterns such as trees; regular expressions; graphs; point sets; and arrays. The goal is to derive combinatorial properties of such structures and to exploit these properties in order to achieve superior performance for the corresponding computational problems. The meeting also deals with problems in computational biology; data compression and data mining; coding; information retrieval; natural language processing; and pattern recognition.

A state-of-the-art view of recent developments in the use of artificial neural networks for analysing remotely sensed satellite data. Neural networks, as a new form of computational paradigm, appear well suited to many of the tasks involved in this image analysis. This book demonstrates a wide range of uses of neural networks for remote sensing applications and reports the views of a large number of European experts brought together as part of a concerted action supported by the European Commission.

The study of the genetic basis for evolution has flourished in this century, as well as our understanding of the evolvability and programmability of biological systems. Genetic algorithms meanwhile grew out of the realization that a computer program could use the biologically-inspired processes of mutation, recombination, and selection to solve hard optimization problems. Genetic and evolutionary programming provide further approaches to a wide variety of computational problems. A synthesis of these experiences reveals fundamental insights into both the computational nature of biological evolution and processes of importance to computer science. Topics include biological models of nucleic acid information processing and genome evolution; molecules, cells, and metabolic circuits that compute logical relationships; the origin and evolution of the genetic code; and the interface with genetic algorithms and genetic and evolutionary programming.

In den letzten Jahren hat sich der Workshop "Bildverarbeitung fur die Medizin" durch erfolgreiche Veranstaltungen etabliert. Ziel ist auch 2014 wieder die Darstellung aktueller Forschungsergebnisse und die Vertiefung der Gesprache zwischen Wissenschaftlern, Industrie und Anwendern. Die Beitrage dieses Bandes - einige davon in englischer Sprache - umfassen alle Bereiche der medizinischen Bildverarbeitung, insbesondere Bildgebung und -akquisition, Molekulare Bildgebung, Visualisierung und Animation, Bildsegmentierung und -fusion, Anatomische Atlanten, Zeitreihenanalysen, Biomechanische Modellierung, Klinische Anwendung computerunterstutzter Systeme, Validierung und Qualitatssicherung u.v.m.

Human action analysis and recognition is a relatively mature field, yet one which is often not well understood by students and researchers. The large number of possible variations in human motion and appearance, camera viewpoint, and environment, present considerable challenges. Some important and common problems remain unsolved by the computer vision community. However, many valuable approaches have been proposed over the past decade, including the motion history image (MHI) method. This method has received significant attention, as it offers greater robustness and performance than other techniques. This work presents a comprehensive review of these state-of-the-art approaches and their applications, with a particular focus on the MHI method and its variants.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in applying neural networks to dynamic systems identification (modelling), prediction and control. Neural networks are computing systems characterised by the ability to learn from examples rather than having to be programmed in a conventional sense. Their use enables the behaviour of complex systems to be modelled and predicted and accurate control to be achieved through training, without a priori information about the systems' structures or parameters. This book describes examples of applications of neural networks In modelling, prediction and control. The topics covered include identification of general linear and non-linear processes, forecasting of river levels, stock market prices and currency exchange rates, and control of a time-delayed plant and a two-joint robot. These applications employ the major types of neural networks and learning algorithms. The neural network types considered in detail are the muhilayer perceptron (MLP), the Elman and Jordan networks and the Group-Method-of-Data-Handling (GMDH) network. In addition, cerebellar-model-articulation-controller (CMAC) networks and neuromorphic fuzzy logic systems are also presented. The main learning algorithm adopted in the applications is the standard backpropagation (BP) algorithm. Widrow-Hoff learning, dynamic BP and evolutionary learning are also described.

This book comprises the refereed proceedings of the International Conference, AIM/CCPE 2012, held in Bangalore, India, in April 2012. The papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions and focus on the various aspects of research and development activities in computer science, information technology, computational engineering, mobile communication, control and instrumentation, communication system, power electronics and power engineering.

The two volumes LNCS 6553 and 6554 constitute the refereed post-proceedings of 7 workshops held in conjunction with the 11th European Conference on Computer Vision, held in Heraklion, Crete, Greece in September 2010. The 62 revised papers presented together with 2 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The first volume contains 26 revised papers and 2 invited talks selected from the following workshops: First International Workshop on Parts and Attributes; Third Workshop on Human Motion Understanding, Modeling, Capture and Animation; and International Workshop on Sign, Gesture and Activity (SGA 2010).

Machine vision technology has revolutionised the process of automated inspection in manufacturing. The specialist techniques required for inspection of natural products, such as food, leather, textiles and stone is still a challenging area of research. Topological variations make image processing algorithm development, system integration and mechanical handling issues much more complex. The practical issues of making machine vision systems operate robustly in often hostile environments together with the latest technological advancements are reviewed in this volume. Features: - Case studies based on real-world problems to demonstrate the practical application of machine vision systems. - In-depth description of system components including image processing, illumination, real-time hardware, mechanical handling, sensing and on-line testing. - Systems-level integration of constituent technologies for bespoke applications across a variety of industries. - A diverse range of example applications that a system may be required to handle from live fish to ceramic tiles. Machine Vision for the Inspection of Natural Products will be a valuable resource for researchers developing innovative machine vision systems in collaboration with food technology, textile and agriculture sectors. It will also appeal to practising engineers and managers in industries where the application of machine vision can enhance product safety and process efficiency.

Soft computing is a consortium of computing methodologies that provide a foundation for the conception, design, and deployment of intelligent systems and aims to formalize the human ability to make rational decisions in an environment of uncertainty and imprecision. This book is based on a NATO Advanced Study Institute held in 1996 on soft computing and its applications. The distinguished contributors consider the principal constituents of soft computing, namely fuzzy logic, neurocomputing, genetic computing, and probabilistic reasoning, the relations between them, and their fusion in industrial applications. Two areas emphasized in the book are how to achieve a synergistic combination of the main constituents of soft computing and how the combination can be used to achieve a high Machine Intelligence Quotient.

Based on a NATO Advanced Study Institute held in 1993, this book addresses recent advances in automatic speech recognition and speech coding. The book contains contributions by many of the most outstanding researchers from the best laboratories worldwide in the field. The contributions have been grouped into five parts: on acoustic modeling; language modeling; speech processing, analysis and synthesis; speech coding; and vector quantization and neural nets. For each of these topics, some of the best-known researchers were invited to give a lecture. In addition to these lectures, the topics were complemented with discussions and presentations of the work of those attending. Altogether, the reader is given a wide perspective on recent advances in the field and will be able to see the trends for future work.

The presentation and interpretation of visual information is essential to almost every activity in human life and most endeavors of modern technology. This book examines the current status of what is known (and not known) about human vision, how human observers interpret visual data, and how to present such data to facilitate their interpretation and use. Written by experts who are able to cross disciplinary boundaries, the book provides an educational pathway through several models of human vision; describes how the visual response is analyzed and quantified; presents current theories of how the human visual response is interpreted; discusses the cognitive responses of human observers; and examines such applications as space exploration, manufacturing, surveillance, earth and air sciences, and medicine. The book is intended for everyone with an undergraduate-level background in science or engineering with an interest in visual science. This second edition has been brought up to date throughout and contains a new chapter on "Virtual reality and augmented reality in medicine."

Consumer electronics (CE) devices, providing multimedia entertainment and enabling communication, have become ubiquitous in daily life. However, consumer interaction with such equipment currently requires the use of devices such as remote controls and keyboards, which are often inconvenient, ambiguous and non-interactive. An important challenge for the modern CE industry is the design of user interfaces for CE products that enable interactions which are natural, intuitive and fun. As many CE products are supplied with microphones and cameras, the exploitation of both audio and visual information for interactive multimedia is a growing field of research. Collecting together contributions from an international selection of experts, including leading researchers in industry, this unique text presents the latest advances in applications of multimedia interaction and user interfaces for consumer electronics. Covering issues of both multimedia content analysis and human-machine interaction, the book examines a wide range of techniques from computer vision, machine learning, audio and speech processing, communications, artificial intelligence and media technology. Topics and features: introduces novel computationally efficient algorithms to extract semantically meaningful audio-visual events; investigates modality allocation in intelligent multimodal presentation systems, taking into account the cognitive impacts of modality on human information processing; provides an overview on gesture control technologies for CE; presents systems for natural human-computer interaction, virtual content insertion, and human action retrieval; examines techniques for 3D face pose estimation, physical activity recognition, and video summary quality evaluation; discusses the features that characterize the new generation of CE and examines how web services can be integrated with CE products for improved user experience. This book is an essential resource for researchers and practitioners from both academia and industry working in areas of multimedia analysis, human-computer interaction and interactive user interfaces. Graduate students studying computer vision, pattern recognition and multimedia will also find this a useful reference.

We describe in this book, bio-inspired models and applications of hybrid intel- gent systems using soft computing techniques for image analysis and pattern r- ognition based on biometrics and other information sources. Soft Computing (SC) consists of several intelligent computing paradigms, including fuzzy logic, neural networks, and bio-inspired optimization algorithms, which can be used to produce powerful hybrid intelligent systems. The book is organized in five main parts, which contain a group of papers around a similar subject. The first part consists of papers with the main theme of classification methods and applications, which are basically papers that propose new models for classification to solve general pr- lems and applications. The second part contains papers with the main theme of modular neural networks in pattern recognition, which are basically papers using bio-inspired techniques, like modular neural networks, for achieving pattern r- ognition based on biometric measures. The third part contains papers with the theme of bio-inspired optimization methods and applications to diverse problems. The fourth part contains papers that deal with general theory and algorithms of bio-inspired methods, like neural networks and evolutionary algorithms. The fifth part contains papers on computer vision applications of soft computing methods. In the part of classification methods and applications there are 5 papers that - scribe different contributions on fuzzy logic and bio-inspired models with appli- tion in classification for medical images and other data.

Brain imaging brings together the technology, methodology, research questions and approaches of a wide range of scientific fields including physics, statistics, computer science, neuroscience, biology, and engineering. Thus, methodological and technological advances that enable us to obtain measurements, examine relationships across observations, and link these data to neuroscientific hypotheses happen in a highly interdisciplinary environment. The dynamic field of machine learning with its modern approach to data mining provides many relevant approaches for neuroscience and enables the exploration of open questions. This state-of-the-art survey offers a collection of papers from the Workshop on Machine Learning and Interpretation in Neuroimaging, MLINI 2011, held at the 25th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing, NIPS 2011, in the Sierra Nevada, Spain, in December 2011. Additionally, invited speakers agreed to contribute reviews on various aspects of the field, adding breadth and perspective to the volume. The 32 revised papers were carefully selected from 48 submissions. At the interface between machine learning and neuroimaging the papers aim at shedding some light on the state of the art in this interdisciplinary field. They are organized in topical sections on coding and decoding, neuroscience, dynamcis, connectivity, and probabilistic models and machine learning.

This book contains the Proceedings of the US-Japan Seminar on Learning Process in Control Systems. The seminar, held in Nagoya, Japan, from August 18 to 20, 1970, was sponsored by the US-Japan Cooperative Science Program, jointly supported by the National Science Foundation and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. The full texts of all the presented papers except two t are included. The papers cover a great variety of topics related to learning processes and systems, ranging from pattern recognition to systems identification, from learning control to biological modelling. In order to reflect the actual content of the book, the present title was selected. All the twenty-eight papers are roughly divided into two parts--Pattern Recognition and System Identification and Learning Process and Learning Control. It is sometimes quite obvious that some papers can be classified into either part. The choice in these cases was strictly the editor's in order to keep a certain balance between the two parts. During the past decade there has been a considerable growth of interest in problems of pattern recognition and machine learn ing. In designing an optimal pattern recognition or control system, if all the a priori information about the process under study is known and can be described deterministically, the optimal system is usually designed by deterministic optimization techniques."

This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Multimedia and Signal Processing, CMSP 2012, held in Shanghai, China, in December 2012. The 79 full papers included in the volume were selected from 328 submissions from 10 different countries and regions. The papers are organized in topical sections on computer and machine vision, feature extraction, image enhancement and noise filtering, image retrieval, image segmentation, imaging techniques & 3D imaging, pattern recognition, multimedia systems, architecture, and applications, visualization, signal modeling, identification & prediction, speech & language processing, time-frequency signal analysis.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the First International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Manufacturing, IRAM 2012, held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in November 2012. The 64 revised full papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 102 initial submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections named: mobile robots, intelligent autonomous systems, robot vision and robust, autonomous agents, micro, meso and nano-scale automation and assembly, flexible manufacturing systems, CIM and micro-machining, and fabrication techniques.

Speech and language technologies continue to grow in importance as they are used to create natural and efficient interfaces between people and machines, and to automatically transcribe, extract, analyze, and route information from high-volume streams of spoken and written information. The workshops on Mathematical Foundations of Speech Processing and Natural Language Modeling were held in the Fall of 2000 at the University of Minnesota's NSF-sponsored Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications, as part of a "Mathematics in Multimedia" year-long program. Each workshop brought together researchers in the respective technologies on the one hand, and mathematicians and statisticians on the other hand, for an intensive week of cross-fertilization. There is a long history of benefit from introducing mathematical techniques and ideas to speech and language technologies. Examples include the source-channel paradigm, hidden Markov models, decision trees, exponential models and formal languages theory. It is likely that new mathematical techniques, or novel applications of existing techniques, will once again prove pivotal for moving the field forward. This volume consists of original contributions presented by participants during the two workshops. Topics include language modeling, prosody, acoustic-phonetic modeling, and statistical methodology.

The two volumes set, CCIS 383 and 384, constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Engineering Applications of Neural Networks, EANN 2013, held on Halkidiki, Greece, in September 2013. The 91 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers describe the applications of artificial neural networks and other soft computing approaches to various fields such as pattern recognition-predictors, soft computing applications, medical applications of AI, fuzzy inference, evolutionary algorithms, classification, learning and data mining, control techniques-aspects of AI evolution, image and video analysis, classification, pattern recognition, social media and community based governance, medical applications of AI-bioinformatics and learning.

Biometrics in dermatology is an essential tool where data evaluation results in valid interpretations. This book will be the first in this area. One part of the book will describe principal aspects of dermatological research focussing on practical advice. A special part will cover applied biometrics to provide the clinician and researcher with state-of-the-art guidelines to assess the severity of common skin diseases. An additional aspect that will be of interest to pharmacologists addresses pharmacologic assays.