Progress in pattern recognition, image analysis, computer vision, and applications

Pattern recognition is a central topic in contemporary computer sciences, with continuously evolving topics, challenges, and methods, including machine learning, content-based image retrieval, and model- and knowledge-based - proaches, just to name a few. The Iberoamerican Congress on Pattern Recog- tion (CIARP) has become established as a high-quality conference, highlighting the recent evolution of the domain. These proceedings include all papers presented during the 15th edition of this conference, held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in November 2010. As was the case for previous conferences, CIARP 2010 attracted parti- pants from around the world with the aim of promoting and disseminating - going research on mathematical methods and computing techniques for pattern recognition, computer vision, image analysis, and speech recognition, as well as their applications in such diverse areas as robotics, health, entertainment, space exploration, telecommunications, data mining, document analysis, and natural language processing and recognition, to name only a few of them. Moreover, it provided a forum for scienti? c research, experience exchange, sharing new kno- edge and increasing cooperation between research groups in pattern recognition and related areas. It is important to underline that these conferences have contributed sign- icantly to the growth of national associations for pattern recognition in the Iberoamerican region, all of them as members of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR).