The subject of pattern analysis and recognition pervades many aspects of our daily lives, including user authentication in banking, object retrieval from databases in the consumer sector, and the omnipresent surveillance and security measures around sensitive areas. Shape analysis, a fundamental building block in many approaches to these applications, is also used in statistics, biomedical applications (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), and many other related disciplines.

With contributions from some of the leading experts and pioneers in the field, this self-contained, unified volume is the first comprehensive treatment of theory, methods, and algorithms available in a single resource. Developments are discussed from a rapidly increasing number of research papers in diverse fields, including the mathematical and physical sciences, engineering, and medicine.