This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Visual Information Systems, VISUAL 2007, held in Shanghai, China, in June 2007.

The 54 revised full papers presented together with 1 keynote lecture were carefully reviewed and selected from 117 submissions. The papers are organized in topical section on image and video retrieval, visual biometrics, intelligent visual information processing, visual data mining, ubiquitous and mobile visual information systems, semantics, 2D/3D graphical visual data retrieval, and applications of visual information systems.

This book is a thoroughly arranged anthology outlining the state of the art in the emerging area of visual informationsystems. The chapters presented are a selection of thoroughly refereed and revised full papers first presented at the First International Conference on visual Information Systems held in February 1996. Next generation information systems have a high visual content, and there will be a shift in emphasis from a paradigm of predominantly alphanumeric data processing to one of visual information processing. The book provides a detailed introductory chapter, two keynotes by leading authorities, sections on design and architecture, database management and modelling, contend-based search and retrieval, feature extraction and indexing, query model and interface, and object recognition and content organization.