This book is the outcome of the successful NATO Advanced Study Institute on Pattern Recognition Theory and Applications, held at St. Anne's College, Oxford, in April 1981., The aim of the meeting was to review the recent advances in the theory of pattern recognition and to assess its current and future practical potential. The theme of the Institute - the decision making aspects of pattern recognition with the emphasis on the novel hybrid approaches - and its scope - a high level tutorial coverage of pattern recognition methodologies counterpointed with contrib uted papers on advanced theoretical topics and applications - are faithfully reflected by the volume. The material is divided into five sections: 1. Methodology 2. Image Understanding and Interpretation 3. Medical Applications 4. Speech Processing and Other Applications 5. Panel Discussions. The first section covers a broad spectrum of pattern recognition methodologies, including geometric, statistical, fuzzy set, syntactic, graph-theoretic and hybrid approaches. Its cove, r age of hybrid methods places the volume in a unique position among existing books on pattern recognition. The second section provides an extensive treatment of the topical problem of image understanding from both the artificial intelligence and pattern recognition points of view. The two application sections demonstrate the usefulness of the novel methodologies in traditional pattern 'recognition application areas. They address the problems of hardware/software implementation and of algorithm robustness, flexibility and general reliability. The final section reports on a panel discussion held during the Institute."

Research in the field of pattern recognition both in theo retical terms and in the area of appl ication continues to flourish. Pattern recognition is a fairly diverse field involving researchers whose primary disciplines spread over at least a half dozen fields. Possibly because of the great diversity of backgrounds but a common interest in certain broad areas of application, the field has grown so rapidly and yet seems to promise at least a similar growth rate for the future. This book is a collection containing some of the papers that were presented at the N. A. T. O. Advanced Study Institute held in Bandol, France, September 1975. The main purpose of the institute was to present material which would provide a basic background in the field. Thus, survey papers covering syntactic methods, picture processing, classification theory, and speech recognition were presented. This should have provided the listener (and we hope now, the reader) with an acquaintance with the basic tools, a look at some of the appl ications and an appraisal of how each of the particular topics will evolve. A more recent addition to the pattern recognition "family" is the work in the areas of economics and group choice. Since the process of recognizing and inter preting patterns is so fundamental, it probably is no surprise when a particular discipline is discovered to be amenable to the already developed techniques."

This book is the outcome of the successful NATO Advanced Study Institute on Pattern Recognition Theory and Applications, held at St. Anne's College, Oxford, in April 1981., The aim of the meeting was to review the recent advances in the theory of pattern recognition and to assess its current and future practical potential. The theme of the Institute - the decision making aspects of pattern recognition with the emphasis on the novel hybrid approaches - and its scope - a high level tutorial coverage of pattern recognition methodologies counterpointed with contrib uted papers on advanced theoretical topics and applications - are faithfully reflected by the volume. The material is divided into five sections: 1. Methodology 2. Image Understanding and Interpretation 3. Medical Applications 4. Speech Processing and Other Applications 5. Panel Discussions. The first section covers a broad spectrum of pattern recognition methodologies, including geometric, statistical, fuzzy set, syntactic, graph-theoretic and hybrid approaches. Its cove,r age of hybrid methods places the volume in a unique position among existing books on pattern recognition. The second section provides an extensive treatment of the topical problem of image understanding from both the artificial intelligence and pattern recognition points of view. The two application sections demonstrate the usefulness of the novel methodologies in traditional pattern 'recognition application areas. They address the problems of hardware/software implementation and of algorithm robustness, flexibility and general reliability. The final section reports on a panel discussion held during the Institute.