This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Semantics and Digital Media Technologies, SAMT 2007, held in Genoa, Italy, in December 2007. The conference brings together forums, projects, institutions and individuals investigating the integration of knowledge, semantics and low-level multimedia processing, including new emerging media and application areas. The papers are organized in topical sections.

This book is a guide for researchers and practitioners to the new frontiers of 3D shape analysis and the complex mathematical tools most methods rely on. The target reader includes students, researchers and professionals with an undergraduate mathematics background, who wish to understand the mathematics behind shape analysis. The authors begin with a quick review of basic concepts in geometry, topology, differential geometry, and proceed to advanced notions of algebraic topology, always keeping an eye on the application of the theory, through examples of shape analysis methods such as 3D...