These are the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Advances in Pattern Recognition (ICAPR 2001), held in Rio de Janeiro in 2001. The 40 revised full papers were reviewed and selected for inclusion in the proceedings. The book is organised in topical sections on neural networks and computational intelligence, character recognition and document analysis, feature selection and analysis, pattern recognition and analysis, pattern recognition and classification, image and signal processing applications, and image feature analysis and retrieval.

Overview andGoals Pattern recognition has evolved as a mature field of data analysis and its practice involves decision making using a wide variety of machine learning tools. Over the last three decades, substantial advances have been made in the areas of classification, prediction, optimisation and planning algorithms. Inparticular, the advances made in the areas of non-linear classification, statistical pattern recognition, multi-objective optimisation, string matching and uncertainty management are notable. These advances have been triggered by the availability of cheap computing power...