This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns, CAIP 2001, held in Warsaw, Poland in September 2001. The 88 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The book offers topical sections on image indexing, image compression, pattern recognition, medical image processing, motion analysis, augmented reality, industrial applications in various fields, image analysis, and computer vision.

This book covers the complete spectrum of deformable models, its evolution as an imagery field and its use in many biomedical engineering and clinical application disciplines. It includes level sets, PDEs, curve and surface evolution and their applications in biomedical fields covering both static and motion imagery.

This work presents a method to detect and classify varnish defects on wood surfaces. Since these defects are only partially visible under certain illumination directions, one image doesn't provide enough information for a recognition task. A classification requires inspecting the surface under different illumination directions, which results in image series. The information is distributed along this series and can be extracted by merging the knowledge about the defect shape and light direction.

Since the debut of the Medicine Meets Virtual Reality (MMVR) conference in 1992, MMVR has served as a forum for researchers harnessing IT advances for the benefit of patient diagnosis and care, medical education and procedural training. At MMVR, virtual reality becomes a theatre for medicine, where multiple senses are engaged - sight, sound and touch - and language and image fuse. Precisely because this theatre is unreal, it is a valuable tool: the risks of experimentation and failure are gone, while the opportunity to understand remains. Improvement of this tool, through steady technological progress, is the purpose of MMVR. This book presents papers delivered at the MMVR18 / NextMed conference, held in Newport Beach, California, in February 2011, with contributions from international researchers whose work creates new devices and methods at the juncture of informatics and medicine. Subjects covered include simulation and learning, visualization and information-guided therapy, robotics and haptics, virtual reality and advanced ICT in Europe, validation of new surgical techniques, and many other applications of virtual-reality technology. As its name suggests, the NextMed conference looks forward to the expanding role that virtual reality can play in global healthcare. This overview of current technology will interest those who dedicate themselves to improving medicine through technology.

“Visual Sensing and its Applications: Integration of Laser Sensors to Industrial Robots” provides comprehensive and up-to-date coverage of research and development on this robotic vision system. A laser-structured light is the main concern in discussions of visual sensing. Also addressed in this book are all components of the robotic vision system and an emphasis on how to increase the accuracy of the system using three levels of calibration. This includes calibration of the vision system (eye calibration), calibration of eye-to-hand configuration and calibration of robot kinematics (hand calibration). With the integration of the laser sensors to industrial robots numerous applications in the field of robotic welding, grinding, machining, inspection, and palletizing are illustrated based on practical engineering projects in order to demonstrate how the visual sensing is performed. The book will serve as a valuable resource for researchers and engineers in the areas of robotics and machine vision. Dr. Zhongxue Gan is a vice chairman and chief scientist of the ENN Group, China. He serves as a member of the National Energy Expert Consultation Committee of China and member of the National Coal Council of the USA. He is also a co-founder of Intersmart Robotic Systems Co. Ltd., China. He was a research fellow in flexible automation systems at ABB and a founding director of ABB Corporate Research Robot Laboratories, both in the USA and in China. Dr. Qing Tang is a co-founder and CEO of Intersmart Robotic Systems Co. Ltd., China and an adjunct professor in Physics at Sichuan University, China. He was a principle consulting engineer and project manager at the ABB Corporate Research Robot Laboratory in the USA.

The book covers novel strategies of state of the art in engineering and clinical analysis and approaches for analyzing abdominal imaging, including lung, mediastinum, pleura, liver, kidney and gallbladder. In the last years the imaging techniques have experienced a tremendous improvement in the diagnosis and characterization of the pathologies that affect abdominal organs. In particular, the introduction of extremely fast CT scanners and high Magnetic field MR Systems allow imaging with an exquisite level of detail the anatomy and pathology of liver, kidney, pancreas, gallbladder as well as lung and mediastinum. Moreover, thanks to the development of powerful computer hardware and advanced mathematical algorithms the quantitative and automated\semi automated diagnosis of the pathology is becoming a reality. Medical image analysis plays an essential role in the medical imaging field, including computer-aided diagnosis, organ/lesion segmentation, image registration, and image-guided therapy. This book will cover all the imaging techniques, potential for applying such imaging clinically, and offer present and future applications as applied to the abdomen and thoracic imaging with the most world renowned scientists in these fields. The main aim of this book is to help advance scientific research within the broad field of abdominal imaging. This book focuses on major trends and challenges in this area, and it presents work aimed to identify new techniques and their use in medical imaging analysis for abdominal imaging. ​