This book is the result of a special workshop on Spatial Computing which brought together experts in computer vision, visualization, multimedia and geographic information systems to discuss common problems and applications. The common theme of the workshop was the need to integrate human perception and domain knowledge with developing representations and solutions to problems which necessarily involve the interpretation of sensed data. The overwhelming conclusion was that these different areas of spatial computing should be communicating more than is done at present and that such workshops and publications would help this process.

This book is the result of a special workshop on Spatial Computing which brought together experts in computer vision, visualization, multimedia and geographic information systems to discuss common problems and applications. The common theme of the workshop was the need to integrate human perception and domain knowledge with developing representations and solutions to problems which necessarily involve the interpretation of sensed data. The overwhelming conclusion was that these different areas of spatial computing should be communicating more than is done at present and that such workshops and publications would help this process.

Computing increasingly happens somewhere, with that geographic location important to the computational process itself. Many new and evolving spatial technologies, such as geosensor networks and smartphones, embody this trend. Conventional approaches to spatial computing are centralized, and do not account for the inherently decentralized nature of "computing somewhere": the limited, local knowledge of individual system components, and the interaction between those components at different locations. On the other hand, despite being an established topic in distributed systems, decentralized computing is not concerned with geographical constraints to the generation and movement of information. In this context, of (centralized) spatial computing and decentralized (non-spatial) computing, the key question becomes: "What makes decentralized spatial computing special?" In Part I of the book the author covers the foundational concepts, structures, and design techniques for decentralized computing with spatial and spatiotemporal information. In Part II he applies those concepts and techniques to the development of algorithms for decentralized spatial computing, stepping through a suite of increasingly sophisticated algorithms: from algorithms with minimal spatial information about their neighborhoods; to algorithms with access to more detailed spatial information, such as direction, distance, or coordinate location; to truly spatiotemporal algorithms that monitor environments that are dynamic, even using networks that are mobile or volatile. Finally, in Part III the author shows how decentralized spatial and spatiotemporal algorithms designed using the techniques explored in Part II can be simulated and tested. In particular, he investigates empirically the important properties of a decentralized spatial algorithm: its computational efficiency and its robustness to unavoidable uncertainty. Part III concludes with a survey of the opportunities for connecting decentralized spatial computing to ongoing research and emerging hot topics in related fields, such as biologically inspired computing, geovisualization, and stream computing. The book is written for students and researchers of computer science and geographic information science. Throughout the book the author's style is characterized by a focus on the broader message, explaining the process of decentralized spatial algorithm design rather than the technical details. Each chapter ends with review questions designed to test the reader's understanding of the material and to point to further work or research. The book includes short appendices on discrete mathematics and SQL. Simulation models written in NetLogo and associated source code for all the algorithms presented in the book can be found on the author's accompanying website.

This book contains selected papers presented at Vision Interface '98, held in Vancouver, Canada, in June 1998. It spans a wide spectrum of topics in computer vision and image processing. During the last three decades, the field of computer vision and image processing has grown at a phenomenal rate due to the development of innovative techniques coupled with the advance in hardware that have been made available at lower cost. Numerous practical applications are now being realized to justify the theme of Vision Interface '98 — “Real World Applications of Computer Vision”.

Texture analysis is an important generic research area of machine vision. The potential areas of application include biomedical image analysis, industrial inspection, analysis of satellite or aerial imagery, content-based retrieval from image databases, document analysis, biometric person authentication, scene analysis for robot navigation, texture synthesis for computer graphics and animation, and image coding. Texture analysis has been a topic of intensive research for over three decades, but the progress has been very slow.A workshop on “Texture Analysis in Machine Vision” was held at the University of Oulu, Finland, in 1999, providing a forum for presenting recent research results and for discussing how to make progress in order to increase the usefulness of texture in practical applications. This book contains extended and revised versions of the papers presented at the workshop. The first part of the book deals with texture analysis methodology, while the second part covers various applications. The book gives a unique view of different approaches and applications of texture analysis. It should be of great interest both to researchers of machine vision and to practitioners in various application areas.

The main aim of this book is to present a sample of recent research on the application of novel artificial intelligence paradigms to the diagnosis and prognosis of breast cancer. These paradigms include neural networks, fuzzy logic and evolutionary computing. Artificial intelligence techniques offer advantages ? such as adaptation, fault tolerance, learning and human-like behavior ? over conventional computing techniques. The idea is to combine the pathological, intelligent and statistical approaches to enable simple and accurate diagnosis and prognosis.This book is the first of its kind on the topic of artificial intelligence in breast cancer. It presents the applications of artificial intelligence in breast cancer diagnosis and prognosis, and includes state-of-the-art concepts in the field. It contains contributions from Australia, Germany, Italy, UK and the USA.

In recent years, rapid progress has been made in computer processing of oriental languages, and the research developments in this area have resulted in tremendous changes in handwriting processing, printed oriental character recognition, document analysis and recognition, automatic input methodologies for oriental languages, etc. Advances in computer processing of oriental languages can also be seen in multimedia computing and the World Wide Web. Many of the results in those domains are presented in this book.