The book presents selected methods for accelerating image retrieval and classification in large collections of images using what are referred to as 'hand-crafted features.' It introduces readers to novel rapid image description methods based on local and global features, as well as several techniques for comparing images. Developing content-based image comparison, retrieval and classification methods that simulate human visual perception is an arduous and complex process. The book's main focus is on the application of these methods in a relational database context. The methods presented are suitable for both general-type and medical images. Offering a valuable textbook for upper-level undergraduate or graduate-level courses on computer science or engineering, as well as a guide for computer vision researchers, the book focuses on techniques that work under real-world large-dataset conditions.

Fuzzy classi ers are important tools in exploratory data analysis, which is a vital set of methods used in various engineering, scienti c and business applications. Fuzzy classi ers use fuzzy rules and do not require assumptions common to statistical classi cation. Rough set theory is useful when data sets are incomplete. It de nes a formal approximation of crisp sets by providing the lower and the upper approximation of the original set. Systems based on rough sets have natural ability to work on such data and incomplete vectors do not have to be preprocessed before classi cation. To achieve better performance than existing machine learning systems, fuzzy classifiers and rough sets can be combined in ensembles. Such ensembles consist of a nite set of learning models, usually weak learners.

The present book discusses the three aforementioned elds - fuzzy systems, rough sets and ensemble techniques. As the trained ensemble should represent a single hypothesis, a lot of attention is placed on the possibility to combine fuzzy rules from fuzzy systems being members of classi cation ensemble. Furthermore, an emphasis is placed on ensembles that can work on incomplete data, thanks to rough set theory. ."

The two-volume set LNCS 11508 and 11509 constitutes the refereed proceedings of of the 18th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2019, held in Zakopane, Poland, in June 2019. The 122 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 333 submissions. The papers included in the first volume are organized in the following five parts: neural networks and their applications; fuzzy systems and their applications; evolutionary algorithms and their applications; pattern classification; artificial intelligence in modeling and simulation. The papers included in the second volume are organized in the following five parts: computer vision, image and speech analysis; bioinformatics, biometrics, and medical applications; data mining; various problems of artificial intelligence; agent systems, robotics and control.

The two-volume set LNAI 10841 and LNAI 10842 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2018, held in Zakopane, Poland in June 2018. The 140 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 242 submissions. The papers included in the first volume are organized in the following three parts: neural networks and their applications; evolutionary algorithms and their applications; and pattern classification.

The two-volume set LNAI 10841 and LNAI 10842 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2018, held in Zakopane, Poland in June 2018. The 140 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 242 submissions. The papers included in the second volume are organized in the following five parts: computer vision, image and speech analysis; bioinformatics, biometrics, and medical applications; data mining; artificial intelligence in modeling, simulation and control; and various problems of artificial intelligence.

Fuzzy classifiers are important tools in exploratory data analysis, which is a vital set of methods used in various engineering, scientific and business applications. Fuzzy classifiers use fuzzy rules and do not require assumptions common to statistical classification. Rough set theory is useful when data sets are incomplete. It defines a formal approximation of crisp sets by providing the lower and the upper approximation of the original set. Systems based on rough sets have natural ability to work on such data and incomplete vectors do not have to be preprocessed before classification. To achieve better performance than existing machine learning systems, fuzzy classifiers and rough sets can be combined in ensembles. Such ensembles consist of a finite set of learning models, usually weak learners. The present book discusses the three aforementioned fields - fuzzy systems, rough sets and ensemble techniques. As the trained ensemble should represent a single hypothesis, a lot of attention is placed on the possibility to combine fuzzy rules from fuzzy systems being members of classification ensemble. Furthermore, an emphasis is placed on ensembles that can work on incomplete data, thanks to rough set theory. .

The two-volume set LNAI 8467 and LNAI 8468 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2014, held in Zakopane, Poland in June 2014. The 139 revised full papers presented in the volumes, were carefully reviewed and selected from 331 submissions. The 69 papers included in the first volume are focused on the following topical sections: Neural Networks and Their Applications, Fuzzy Systems and Their Applications, Evolutionary Algorithms and Their Applications, Classification and Estimation, Computer Vision, Image and Speech Analysis and Special Session 3: Intelligent Methods in Databases. The 71 papers in the second volume are organized in the following subjects: Data Mining, Bioinformatics, Biometrics and Medical Applications, Agent Systems, Robotics and Control, Artificial Intelligence in Modeling and Simulation, Various Problems of Artificial Intelligence, Special Session 2: Machine Learning for Visual Information Analysis and Security, Special Session 1: Applications and Properties of Fuzzy Reasoning and Calculus and Clustering.

The two-volume set LNAI 7894 and LNCS 7895 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2013, held in Zakopane, Poland in June 2013. The 112 revised full papers presented together with one invited paper were carefully reviewed and selected from 274 submissions. The 57 papers included in the first volume are organized in the following topical sections: neural networks and their applications; fuzzy systems and their applications; pattern classification; and computer vision, image and speech analysis.

The two-volume set LNAI 8467 and LNAI 8468 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2014, held in Zakopane, Poland in June 2014. The 139 revised full papers presented in the volumes, were carefully reviewed and selected from 331 submissions. The 69 papers included in the first volume are focused on the following topical sections: Neural Networks and Their Applications, Fuzzy Systems and Their Applications, Evolutionary Algorithms and Their Applications, Classification and Estimation, Computer Vision, Image and Speech Analysis and Special Session 3: Intelligent Methods in Databases. The 71 papers in the second volume are organized in the following subjects: Data Mining, Bioinformatics, Biometrics and Medical Applications, Agent Systems, Robotics and Control, Artificial Intelligence in Modeling and Simulation, Various Problems of Artificial Intelligence, Special Session 2: Machine Learning for Visual Information Analysis and Security, Special Session 1: Applications and Properties of Fuzzy Reasoning and Calculus and Clustering.

The volume LNCS 7269 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Symposium on Swarm Intelligence and Differential Evolution, SIDE 2012, held in Zakopane, Poland, in April/May 2012 in conjunction with the 11th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2012 (proceedings published as two-volume set LNAI 7267 and 7268). The 212 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 483 submissions. The volume is divided into two topical parts: proceedings of the 2012 symposium on swarm intelligence and differential evolution and on evolutionary algorithms and their applications.

The two-volume set LNAI 7267 and LNCS 7268 (together with LNCS 7269) constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2012, held in Zakopane, Poland in April/May 2012. The 212 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 483 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on neural networks and their applications, computer vision, image and speech analysis, data mining, hardware implementation, bioinformatics, biometrics and medical applications, concurrent parallel processing, agent systems, robotics and control, artificial intelligence in modeling and simulation, various problems od artificial intelligence.

The two-volume set LNAI 7894 and LNCS 7895 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2013, held in Zakopane, Poland in June 2013. The 112 revised full papers presented together with one invited paper were carefully reviewed and selected from 274 submissions. The 56 papers included in the second volume are organized in the following topical sections: evolutionary algorithms and their applications; data mining; bioinformatics and medical applications; agent systems, robotics and control; artificial intelligence in modeling and simulation; and various problems of artificial intelligence.

The two-volume set LNAI 7267 and 7268 (together with LNCS 7269 ) constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2012, held in Zakopane, Poland in April/ May 2012. The 212 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 483 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on neural networks and their applications, computer vision, image and speech analysis, data mining, hardware implementation, bioinformatics, biometrics and medical applications, concurrent parallel processing, agent systems, robotics and control, artificial intelligence in modeling and simulation, various problems od artificial intelligence.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Arti?cial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2010, held in Zakopane, PolandduringJune13-17,2010. TheconferencewasorganizedbythePolishN- ral Network Society in cooperation with the Academy of Management in L od z (SWSPiZ), the Department of Computer Engineering at the Czestochowa U- versity of Technology, and the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, Poland Chapter. The previous conferences took place in Kule (1994), Szczyrk (1996), Kule (1997) and Zakopane (1999, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008) and attracted a large number of papers and internationally recognized speakers: Lot? A. Zadeh, Shun-ichi Amari, Daniel Amit, Piero P. Bonissone, Zdzislaw Bubnicki, Andrzej Cichocki, WlodzislawDuch, PabloA. Est evez, JerzyGrzymala-Busse, Kaoru- rota, Janusz Kacprzyk, Laszlo T. Koczy, Soo-Young Lee, Robert Marks, Ev- gelia Micheli-Tzanakou, Erkki Oja, Witold Pedrycz, Sarunas Raudys, Enrique Ruspini, Jorg Siekman, Roman Slowinski, Ryszard Tadeusiewicz, Shiro Usui, Ronald Y. Yager, Syozo Yasui and Jacek Zurada. The aim of this conference is to build a bridge between traditional arti?cial intelligence techniques and recently developed soft computing techniques. It was pointed out by Lot? A. Zadeh that"Soft Computing (SC) is a coalition of methodologies which are o- ented toward the conception and design of information/intelligent systems. The principal members of the coalition are: fuzzy logic (FL), neurocomputing (NC), evolutionary computing (EC), probabilistic computing (PC), chaotic computing (CC), and machine learning (ML). The constituent methodologies of SC are, for themostpart, complementaryandsynergisticratherthancompetitive. "Thisv- ume presents both traditional arti?cial intelligence methods and soft computing techniques."

The two-volume set LNAI 14125  and 14126 constitutes the refereed conference proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2023, held in Zakopane, Poland, during June 18–22, 2023. The 84 revised full papers presented in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 175 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: Part I:  Neural Networks and Their Applications; Evolutionary Algorithms and Their Applications; and Artificial Intelligence in Modeling and Simulation. Part II: Computer Vision, Image and Speech Analysis; Various Problems of Artificial Intelligence; Bioinformatics, Biometrics and Medical Applications; and Data Mining and Pateern Classification.  

The two-volume set LNAI 13588 and 13589 constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2022, held in Zakopane, Poland, during June 19-23, 2022. The 69 revised full papers presented in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 161 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: Volume I: Neural networks and their applications; fuzzy systems and their applications; evolutionary algorithms and their applications; pattern classification; artificial intelligence in modeling and simulation. Volume II: Computer vision, image and speech analysis; data mining; various problems of artificial intelligence; bioinformatics, biometrics and medical applications.

The two-volume set LNAI 13588 and 13589 constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2022, held in Zakopane, Poland, during June 19-23, 2022. The 69 revised full papers presented in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 161 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: Volume I: Neural networks and their applications; fuzzy systems and their applications; evolutionary algorithms and their applications; pattern classification; artificial intelligence in modeling and simulation. Volume II: Computer vision, image and speech analysis; data mining; various problems of artificial intelligence; bioinformatics, biometrics and medical applications.

The book presents selected methods for accelerating image retrieval and classification in large collections of images using what are referred to as 'hand-crafted features.' It introduces readers to novel rapid image description methods based on local and global features, as well as several techniques for comparing images. Developing content-based image comparison, retrieval and classification methods that simulate human visual perception is an arduous and complex process. The book's main focus is on the application of these methods in a relational database context. The methods presented are suitable for both general-type and medical images. Offering a valuable textbook for upper-level undergraduate or graduate-level courses on computer science or engineering, as well as a guide for computer vision researchers, the book focuses on techniques that work under real-world large-dataset conditions.

The two-volume set LNAI 12854 and 12855 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2021, held in Zakopane, Poland, in June 2021. Due to COVID 19, the conference was held virtually.The 89 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 195 submissions. The papers included both traditional artificial intelligence methods and soft computing techniques as well as follows: * Neural Networks and Their Applications * Fuzzy Systems and Their Applications * Evolutionary Algorithms and Their Applications * Artificial Intelligence in Modeling and Simulation * Computer Vision, Image and Speech Analysis * Data Mining * Various Problems of Artificial Intelligence * Bioinformatics, Biometrics and Medical Applications

The two-volume set LNAI 12854 and 12855 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2021, held in Zakopane, Poland, in June 2021. Due to COVID 19, the conference was held virtually.The 89 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 195 submissions. The papers included both traditional artificial intelligence methods and soft computing techniques as well as follows: * Neural Networks and Their Applications * Fuzzy Systems and Their Applications * Evolutionary Algorithms and Their Applications * Artificial Intelligence in Modeling and Simulation * Computer Vision, Image and Speech Analysis * Data Mining * Various Problems of Artificial Intelligence * Bioinformatics, Biometrics and Medical Applications

The two-volume set LNCS 12415 and 12416 constitutes the refereed proceedings of of the 19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2020, held in Zakopane, Poland*, in October 2020. The 112 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 265 submissions. The papers included in the first volume are organized in the following six parts: neural networks and their applications; fuzzy systems and their applications; evolutionary algorithms and their applications; pattern classification; bioinformatics, biometrics and medical applications; artificial intelligence in modeling and simulation. The papers included in the second volume are organized in the following four parts: computer vision, image and speech analysis; data mining; various problems of artificial intelligence; agent systems, robotics and control. *The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The two-volume set LNCS 12415 and 12416 constitutes the refereed proceedings of of the 19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2020, held in Zakopane, Poland*, in October 2020. The 112 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 265 submissions. The papers included in the first volume are organized in the following six parts: neural networks and their applications; fuzzy systems and their applications; evolutionary algorithms and their applications; pattern classification; bioinformatics, biometrics and medical applications; artificial intelligence in modeling and simulation. The papers included in the second volume are organized in the following four parts: computer vision, image and speech analysis; data mining; various problems of artificial intelligence; agent systems, robotics and control. *The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The two-volume set LNCS 11508 and 11509 constitutes the refereed proceedings of of the 18th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2019, held in Zakopane, Poland, in June 2019. The 122 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 333 submissions. The papers included in the first volume are organized in the following five parts: neural networks and their applications; fuzzy systems and their applications; evolutionary algorithms and their applications; pattern classification; artificial intelligence in modeling and simulation. The papers included in the second volume are organized in the following five parts: computer vision, image and speech analysis; bioinformatics, biometrics, and medical applications; data mining; various problems of artificial intelligence; agent systems, robotics and control.

The two-volume set LNAI 9692 and LNAI 9693 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2016, held in Zakopane, Poland in June 2016. The 134 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 343 submissions. The papers included in the first volume are organized in the following topical sections: neural networks and their applications; fuzzy systems and their applications; evolutionary algorithms and their applications; agent systems, robotics and control; and pattern classification. The second volume is divided in the following parts: bioinformatics, biometrics and medical applications; data mining; artificial intelligence in modeling and simulation; visual information coding meets machine learning; and various problems of artificial intelligence.

The two-volume set LNAI 9692 and LNAI 9693 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2016, held in Zakopane, Poland in June 2016. The 134 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 343 submissions. The papers included in the first volume are organized in the following topical sections: neural networks and their applications; fuzzy systems and their applications; evolutionary algorithms and their applications; agent systems, robotics and control; and pattern classification. The second volume is divided in the following parts: bioinformatics, biometrics and medical applications; data mining; artificial intelligence in modeling and simulation; visual information coding meets machine learning; and various problems of artificial intelligence.