Piotr S. Szczepaniak - Böcker

This volume provides a state-of-the-art survey of artificial neural network applications in biomedical diagnosis, laboratory data analysis and related practical areas. It looks at biomedical applications which involve customising neural network technology to resolve specific difficulties with data processing, and deals with applications relating to particular aspects of clinical practice and laboratory or medically-related analysis. Each chapter is self-contained with regard to the technology used, covering important technical points and implementation issues like the design of user interfaces and hardware/software platforms. Artificial Neural Networks in Biomedicine will be of interest to computer scientists and neural network practitioners who want to extend their knowledge of issues relevant to biomedical applications, developers of clinical computer systems, and medical researchers looking for new methods and computational tools.

In recent years the Internet has become a source of data and information of indisputable importance and has immensely gained in acceptance and popularity. The World Wide Web (WWW or Web, for short), frequently named “the nervous system of the infor- tion society,” offers numerous valuable services leaving no doubt about the signi?cance of the Web in our daily activities at work and at home. Consequently, we have a clear aspiration to meet the obvious need for effective use of its potential by making - provements in both the methods and the technology applied. Among the new research directions observable in Web-related applications, intelligent methods from within the broadly perceived topic of soft computing occupy an important place. AWIC, the “Atlantic Web Intelligence Conferences” are intended to be a forum for exchange of new ideas and novel practical solutions in this new and exciting ?eld. The conference was born as an initiative of the WIC-Poland and the WIC-Spain Research Centres, both belonging to the Web Intelligence Consortium – WIC (http://wi-consortium.org/). So far, three AWIC conferences have been held: in Madrid, Spain (2003), in Cancun, Mexico (2004), and in ?ódz, ´ Poland (2005).

Today, in the middle of the ?rst decade of the 21st century, the Internet has become a major communication medium, where virtually any kind of content can be transferred instantly and reliably between individual users and entire - ganizations located in any part of the globe. The World Wide Web (WWW) has a tremendous e?ect on our daily activities at work and at home. Consequently, more e?ective and e?cient methods and technologies are needed to make the most of the Web’s nearly unlimited potential. The new Web-related research directions include intelligent methods usually associated with the ?elds of c- putational intelligence, soft computing, and data mining. AWIC, the “Atlantic Web Intelligence Conferences” continue to be a forum for exchange of new ideas and novel practical solutions in this new and exciting area. The conference was born as an initiative of the WIC-Poland and the WIC- Spain Research Centers, both belonging to the Web Intelligence Consortium – WIC (http://wi-consortium.org/). Prior to this year, three AWIC conferences have been held: in Madrid, Spain (2003), in Cancun, Mexico (2004), and in L´ od´ z, Poland (2005). AWIC 2006 took place in Beer-Sheva, Israel during June 5–7, 2006, organized locally by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The book presents state-of-the-art developments in the ?eld of computati- ally intelligent methods applied to various aspects and ways of Web exploration.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Atlantic Web Intelligence Conference, AWIC 2003, held in Madrid, Spain in May 2003. The 32 revised full papers presented together with 3 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 70 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on general issues in Web intelligence, Web security, semantic Web, Web authoring and design, Web information retrieval, agents for the Web, and user behavior.

Mastering and effective exploration of the web environment needs new ideas, adaptation of known methods as well as application of sophisticated and robust technical implementations. Among new research directions present in relation to Web applications, a remarkable place is occupied by intelligent methods defining the topic of soft computing. This edited book includes reports from the front of diverse fields of the Web: application of artificial intelligence, design, information retrieval and interpretation, user profiling, security, engineering, etc. The material has been presented at the 5th Atlantic Web Intelligence Conference – AWIC’2007 held in Fontainbleau (France) and organized by Esigetel, Technical University of Lodz, and Polish Academy of Sciences.

Today, in the middle of the ?rst decade of the 21st century, the Internet has become a major communication medium, where virtually any kind of content can be transferred instantly and reliably between individual users and entire - ganizations located in any part of the globe. The World Wide Web (WWW) has a tremendous e?ect on our daily activities at work and at home. Consequently, more e?ective and e?cient methods and technologies are needed to make the most of the Web’s nearly unlimited potential. The new Web-related research directions include intelligent methods usually associated with the ?elds of c- putational intelligence, soft computing, and data mining. AWIC, the “Atlantic Web Intelligence Conferences” continue to be a forum for exchange of new ideas and novel practical solutions in this new and exciting area. The conference was born as an initiative of the WIC-Poland and the WIC- Spain Research Centers, both belonging to the Web Intelligence Consortium – WIC (http://wi-consortium.org/). Prior to this year, three AWIC conferences have been held: in Madrid, Spain (2003), in Cancun, Mexico (2004), and in L´ od´ z, Poland (2005). AWIC 2006 took place in Beer-Sheva, Israel during June 5–7, 2006, organized locally by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The book presents state-of-the-art developments in the ?eld of computati- ally intelligent methods applied to various aspects and ways of Web exploration.

The Atlantic Web Intelligence Conferences bring together scientists, en- neers, computer users, and students to exchange and share their experiences, new ideas, and research results about all aspects (theory, applications and tools)ofintelligentmethodsappliedtoWebbasedsystems,andtodiscussthe practical challenges encountered and the solutions adopted. Previous AWIC eventswereheld in Spain - 2003,Mexico - 2004,Poland- 2005,Israel- 2006 and France - 2007. th This year, the 6 Atlantic Web Intelligence Conference (AWIC2009) held during September 9-11, 2009, at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of theCharlesUniversityinthehistoricalcitycenterofPrague,CzechRepublic. AWIC2009 is organized by the Machine Intelligence Research Labs (MIR ? Labs-http://www.mirlabs.org),VSB-TechnicalUniversityofOstrava,Czech Republic and the Institute of Computer Science, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Conference has attracted submissions from several parts of the world and each paper was reviewed by three or more reviewers. We are sure that the diversity of the topics dealt with in these papers and the quality of their contents, and the three keynote speakers (Peter Vojt' a? s, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, George Feuerlicht, Department of Information Technologies, University of Economics, Prague, Czech Republic & Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, UTS, Australia and Juan D.Velasqu ' ez, University of Chile, Chile) make for an exciting conference. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the program comm- tee, local organizing committee and the numerous referees who helped us evaluate the papers and make AWIC2009 a very successful scienti?c event. VI Preface Grateful appreciation is expressed to Professor Janusz Kacprzyk, Editor of theseriespublishingthis bookaswellastotheSpringerteamforits excellent work.

The Atlantic Web Intelligence Conference brings together scientists, engineers, computer users, and students to exchange and share their experiences, new ideas, and research results about all aspects (theory, applications and tools) of intelligent methods applied to Web based systems, and to discuss the practical challenges encountered and the solutions adopted. Previous AWIC events were held in Spain – 2003, Mexico – 2004, Poland – 2005, Israel – 2006, France – 2007 and Czech Rep. – 2009.The present 7th Atlantic Web Intelligence Conference (AWIC’2011) was held during January 26-28, 2011, at the University of Applied Sciences of Fribourg, Switzerland. AWIC2011 is organized by the Multimedia Information System Group (MISG), Institute of the Technologies of Information and Communication (iTIC) of the University of Applied Sciences of Fribourg.

The tutorials in the first part of the book range from basic concepts through theoretical frameworks to rule simplification through data clustering methodologies and the design of multivariate rule bases through self-learning by mapping fuzzy systems onto neural network structures.

The book contains an up-to-date collection of world wide representative works which cover a wide spectrum of problems related to e-Commerce applications, including: Customer Service and Support, Negotiation and Trading Strategies, Logistic Design and Support, Inventory Optimisation, e-CRM, Customer and/or Product Profiling, Personalization, Modelling and Segmentation, Security in Payments and Transactions, etc. The Intelligent Methods used fall into the so-called category of Soft Computing and cover Neural Networks, Bayesian Networks, Fuzzy Logic, Evolutionary Programming, Agents, and Case Based Reasoning. The book is aimed at researchers and insightful practitioners, lecturers as well as students of e-Commerce and Artificial Intelligence.

The book contains an up-to-date collection of contributions from around the world that cover the wide spectrum of problems related to the World Wide Web. These problems include: organization of Web resources, information retrieval including browsing and Web data mining. Particular emphasis has been put on the creative and innovative application of intelligent methods for effective operations on the Web (information retrieval, extraction, and interpretation). The methods involve but are not restricted to fuzzy logic, neural networks, intelligent clustering, intelligent agents, and expert systems; and operate on textual and - in some cases - multimedia-based Web databases.

The book contains an up-to-date collection of world wide representative works which cover a wide spectrum of problems related to e-Commerce applications, including: Customer Service and Support, Negotiation and Trading Strategies, Logistic Design and Support, Inventory Optimisation, e-CRM, Customer and/or Product Profiling, Personalization, Modelling and Segmentation, Security in Payments and Transactions, etc. The Intelligent Methods used fall into the so-called category of Soft Computing and cover Neural Networks, Bayesian Networks, Fuzzy Logic, Evolutionary Programming, Agents, and Case Based Reasoning. The book is aimed at researchers and insightful practitioners, lecturers as well as students of e-Commerce and Artificial Intelligence.