The fuzzy set was conceived as a result of an attempt to come to grips with the problem of pattern recognition in the context of imprecisely defined categories. In such cases, the belonging of an object to a class is a matter of degree, as is the question of whether or not a group of objects form a cluster. A pioneering application of the theory of fuzzy sets to cluster analysis was made in 1969 by Ruspini. It was not until 1973, however, when the appearance of the work by Dunn and Bezdek on the Fuzzy ISODATA (or fuzzy c-means) algorithms became a landmark in the theory of cluster analysis,...

It is with great pleasure that I present this third volume of the series "Advanced Applications in Pattern Recognition." It represents the summary of many man- (and woman-) years of effort in the field of speech recognition by tne author's former team at the University of Turin. It combines the best results in fuzzy-set theory and artificial intelligence to point the way to definitive solutions to the speech-recognition problem. It is my hope that it will become a classic work in this field. I take this opportunity to extend my thanks and appreciation to Sy Marchand, Plenum's Senior Editor...

It is most appropriate that the first volume to appear in the series "Advanced Applications in Pattern Recognition" should be this monograph by Nagao and Matsuyama. The work described here is a deep unification and synthesis of the two fundamental approaches to pat tern recognition: numerical (also known as "statistical") and struc tural ("linguistic," "syntactic"). The power and unity of the meth odology flow from the apparently effortless and natural use of the knowledge-base framework illuminated by the best results of artificial intelligence research. An integral part of the work is the...

It is with great pleasure that I present this fourth vol- ume in the series "Advanced Applications in Pattern Recognition." It would be difficult to find two authors better versed in the design and application of parallel image processing systems, due to both their own many years of pioneering in the field and their encyclopedic knowledge of what is going on in uni- versity and industrial laboratories around the world. The monograph is unique in its parallel presentation of orthogonal and hexagonal dissections, and the wealth of graphic illustration of algorithmic procedures for processing...