This book is devoted to pattern analysis, that is, the automatic construc tion of a symbolic description for a complex pattern, like an image or con nected speech. Pattern analysis thus tries to simulate certain capabilities which go without saying in any human central nervous system. The increasing interest and growing efforts at solving the problems related with pattern analysis are motivated by the challenge of the problem and the expected ap plications. Potential applications are numerous and result from the fact that data can be gathered and stored by modern devices in ever increasing extent, thus making the finding of particular interesting facts or events in these hosts of data an ever increasing problem. It was tried to organize the book around one particular view of pattern analysis: the view that pattern analysis requires an appropriate set of modules operating on a common data base which contains interme processing diate results of processing. Although other views are certainly possible, this one was adopted because the author feels that it is a useful idea, be cause the size of this book had to be kept within reasonable bounds, and because it facilitated the composition of fairly self-contained chapters.
