Structural, Syntactic, and Statistical Pattern Recognition, SSPR 2004 : Joint IAPR International Workshops, SSPR 2004 and SPR 2004, Lisbon, Portugal, August 18-20, 2004 Proceedings

This volume contains all papers presented at SSPR 2004 and SPR 2004, hosted by the Instituto de Telecomunicac˜ ¸oes/Instituto Superior T´ ecnico, Lisbon, Portugal, August 18–20, 2004. This was the fourth time that the two workshops were held back-to-back. The SSPR was the tenth International Workshop on Structural and Synt- tic Pattern Recognition, and the SPR was the ?fth International Workshop on Statistical Techniques in Pattern Recognition. These workshops have traditi- ally been held in conjunction with ICPR (International Conference on Pattern Recognition), and are the major events for technical committees TC2 and TC1, respectively, of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR). The workshops were closely coordinated, being held in parallel, with plenary talks and a common session on hybrid systems. This was an attempt to resolve thedilemmaofhowto dealwiththeneedfornarrow-focusspecializedworkshops yet accommodate the presentation of new theories and techniques that blur the distinction between the statistical and the structural approaches. A total of 219 papers were received from many countries, with the subm- sion and reviewing processes being carried out separately for each workshop. A total of 59 papers were accepted for oral presentation and 64 for posters. In - dition, four invited speakers presented informative talks and overviews of their research. They were: Alberto Sanfeliu, from the Technical University of Cata- nia, Spain; Marco Gori, from the University of Siena, Italy; Nello Cristianini, from the University of California, USA; and Erkki Oja, from Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, winner of the 2004 Pierre Devijver Award.

Invited Talks.- Finding Clusters and Components by Unsupervised Learning.- Kernel Methods for Exploratory Pattern Analysis: A Demonstration on Text Data.- The Use of Graph Techniques for Identifying Objects and Scenes in Indoor Building Environments for Mobile Robots.- Graphical-Based Learning Environments for Pattern Recognition.- SSPR.- Spectral Analysis of Complex Laplacian Matrices.- Decision Tree Structures for Graph Database Filtering.- A Significant Improvement of Softassign with Diffusion Kernels.- Structural Perceptrons for Attributed Graphs.- Eigenspace Method by Autoassociative Networks for Object Recognition.- A Novel Constraint-Based Approach to Online Graphics Recognition.- Extraction of Skeletal Shape Features Using a Visual Attention Operator.- Computing the Cyclic Edit Distance for Pattern Classification by Ranking Edit Paths.- Contour Segments from Spline Interpolation.- Steady State Random Walks for Path Estimation.- Learning of Form Models from Exemplars.- An Optimal Probabilistic Graphical Model for Point Set Matching.- A New Variational Framework for Rigid-Body Alignment.- An Error-Tolerant Approximate Matching Algorithm for Attributed Planar Graphs and Its Application to Fingerprint Classification.- Comparison of Algorithms for Web Document Clustering Using Graph Representations of Data.- Heat Kernels, Manifolds and Graph Embedding.- A Syntactic Pattern Recognition Approach to Computer Assisted Translation.- GIATI: A General Methodology for Finite-State Translation Using Alignments.- A Coupled Relaxation Method for Finding Perceptual Structures.- A Comparison of Unsupervised Shot Classification Algorithms for News Video Segmentation.- Diagnosis of Lung Nodule Using the Semivariogram Function.- Dictionary-Based Syntactic Pattern Recognition Using Tries.- Improving Probabilistic Automata Learning with Additional Knowledge.- Distances between Distributions: Comparing Language Models.- A New Uniform Translocation Distance.- Understanding Human-Computer Interactions in Map Revision.- Multiscale Curvature Assessment of Postural Deviations.- Modelling Human Shape with Articulated Shape Mixtures.- Learning People Movement Model from Multiple Cameras for Behaviour Recognition.- Poster Papers.- A Comparison of Least Squares and Spectral Methods for Attributed Graph Matching.- An Auction Algorithm for Graph-Based Contextual Correspondence Matching.- Segmentation Graph Hierarchies.- Clustering Variable Length Sequences by Eigenvector Decomposition Using HMM.- A Kernel View of Spectral Point Pattern Matching.- Neural Networks for Improved Target Differentiation with Sonar.- An MCMC Feature Selection Technique for Characterizing and Classifying Spatial Region Data.- Human Action Recognition by Inference of Stochastic Regular Grammars.- Optimizing Classification Ensembles via a Genetic Algorithm for a Web-Based Educational System.- A Structural Approach to Adaptive Inverse Halftoning for Document Images.- Syntactic Modeling and Recognition of Document Images.- Symbols Recognition System for Graphic Documents Combining Global Structural Approaches and Using a XML Representation of Data.- Sketch Recognition Based on Topological Spatial Relationship.- A Study on the Consistency of Features for On-Line Signature Verification.- Statistical Structure of Natural 4 × 4 Image Patches.- Grey Scale Skeletonisation with Curvature Sensitive Noise Damping.- License Vehicle Plates Localization Using Maximum Correlation.- Adaptive Context for a Discrete Universal Denoiser.- Pose Estimation from Airborne Video Sequences Using a Structural Approach for the Construction of Homographies and Fundamental Matrices.- Temporal Post-processing of Decision Tree Outputs for Sports Video Categorisation.- A New Method of Polyline Approximation.- On Extending Symmetry Sets for 2D Shapes.- Structural Analysis and Matching of Shape by Logical Property.- Scale Descriptors through Phase Unwrapping.- Lung Segmentation on Postero-anterior Digital Chest Radiographs Using Active Contours.- Emotion Recognition from Dance Image Sequences Using Contour Approximation.- Matching Concavity Trees.- SPR.- Combining Classifier for Face Identification at Unknown Views with a Single Model Image.- A Logodds Criterion for Selection of Diagnostic Tests.- Evaluation of Classical and Novel Ensemble Methods for Handwritten Word Recognition.- Improving Support Vector Classification via the Combination of Multiple Sources of Information.- Fusing Segmentation and Classification from Multiple Features.- A Classifier Combination Tree Algorithm.- Bounds for the Average Generalization Error of the Mixture of Experts Neural Network.- An Effective EM Algorithm for PCA Mixture Model.- EM Initialisation for Bernoulli Mixture Learning.- A New Family of Weak Estimators for Training in Non-stationary Distributions.- Path Relinking Particle Filter for Human Body Pose Estimation.- Clustering with Soft and Group Constraints.- Learning from General Label Constraints.- Solving the One-Class Problem Using Neighbourhood Measures.- Detection of a Single Texture in Colour Images.- Clustering Based Under-Sampling for Improving Speaker Verification Decisions Using AdaBoost.- Control of Sparseness for Feature Selection.- On Prediction Mechanisms in Fast Branch & Bound Algorithms.- Structures of Covariance Matrix in Handwritten Character Recognition.- Statistical Machine Translation Decoding Using Target Word Reordering.- Classifier Design for Population and Sensor Drift.- A Cost-Sensitive Paradigm for Multiclass to Binary Decomposition Schemes.- Cost-Based Classifier Evaluation for Imbalanced Problems.- A Two-Stage Classifier with Reject Option for Text Categorisation.- Misclassification Probability Estimations for Linear Decision Functions.- Generalized Variable-Kernel Similarity Metric Learning.- Approximate Gradient Direction Metric for Face Authentication.- Poster Papers.- The Imbalanced Training Sample Problem: Under or over Sampling?.- Automatic Preference Mining through Learning User Profile with Extracted Information.- A Computational Study of Naíve Bayesian Learning in Anti-spam Management.- Kernel-Based Non-linear Template Matching.- Analyzing Weight Distribution of Feedforward Neural Networks and Efficient Weight Initialization.- One-Class Support Vector Machines with a Conformal Kernel. A Case Study in Handling Class Imbalance.- Automatic Labeling of Sports Video Using Umpire Gesture Recognition.- Comparison of Two Fast Nearest-Neighbour Search Methods in High-Dimensional Large-Sized Databases.- A Shallow Description Framework for Musical Style Recognition.- A Nearest Neighbor Method Using Bisectors.- Distance Based Strategy for Supervised Document Image Classification.- Identification of Humans Using Robust Biometric Features.- Facial Expression Recognition Based on the Two-Dimensional Structure of Affect.- Clustering Using WCC Models.- Algorithms for Constructing Min-Max Partitions of the Parameter Space for MDL Inference.- Preclustering of Electrocardiographic Signals Using Left-to-Right Hidden Markov Models.- Graph-Based Clustering of Random Point Set.- Cluster Validity and Stability of Clustering Algorithms.- Bagging Classification Models with Reduced Bootstrap.- Multiple Classifier Prediction Improvements against Imbalanced Datasets through Added Synthetic Examples.- Automatic Design of Cascaded Classifiers.- Recognition of Handwritten Numerals Using a Combined Classifier with Hybrid Features.- Generating Classifier Outputs with Fixed Diversity for Evaluating Voting Methods.- Feature Selection Using Improved Mutual Information for Text Classification.- Feature Subset Selection Using an Optimized Hill Climbing Algorithm for Handwritten Character Recognition.- Feature Shaving for Spectroscopic Data.- Feature Selection by Markov Chain Monte Carlo Sampling – A Bayesian Approach.- Classifier-Independent Visualization of Supervised Data Structures Using a Graph.- Texel-Based Texture Synthesis with Bunch Sampling.- Towards 3-Dimensional Pattern Recognition.- A General Strategy for Hidden Markov Chain Parameterisation in Composite Feature-Spaces.- Tracking the Evolution of a Tennis Match Using Hidden Markov Models.- Local Features for Speaker Recognition.- Selection/Extraction of Spectral Regions for Autofluorescence Spectra Measured in the Oral Cavity.- Kernel Relative Principal Component Analysis for Pattern Recognition.- Dynamic Character Model Generation for Document Keyword Spotting.- Texture Classification by Combining Wavelet and Contourlet Features.- Distance Measures between Attributed Graphs and Second-Order Random Graphs.- On Not Making Dissimilarities Euclidean.- Content Structure Discovery in Educational Videos Using Shared Structures in the Hierarchical Hidden Markov Models.