Keynote Paper -- Visual Information Retrieval - Future Directions and Grand Challenges -- Image and Video Retrieval -- Approximation-Based Keypoints in Colour Images - A Tool for Building and Searching Visual Databases -- A Knowledge Synthesizing Approach for Classification of Visual Information -- Image Similarity - From Fuzzy Sets to Color Image Applications -- A Semi-automatic Feature Selecting Method for Sports Video Highlight Annotation -- Face Image Retrieval System Using TFV and Combination of Subimages -- Near-Duplicate Detection Using a New Framework of Constructing Accurate Affine Invariant Regions -- Where Are Focused Places of a Photo? -- Region Based Image Retrieval Incorporated with Camera Metadata -- Empirical Investigations on Benchmark Tasks for Automatic Image Annotation -- Automatic Detection and Recognition of Players in Soccer Videos -- A Temporal and Visual Analysis-Based Approach to Commercial Detection in News Video -- Salient Region Filtering for Background Subtraction -- A Novel SVM-Based Method for Moving Video Objects Recognition -- Image Classification and Indexing by EM Based Multiple-Instance Learning -- Visual Biometrics -- Palm Vein Extraction and Matching for Personal Authentication -- A SVM Face Recognition Method Based on Optimized Gabor Features -- Palmprint Identification Using Pairwise Relative Angle and EMD -- Finding Lips in Unconstrained Imagery for Improved Automatic Speech Recognition -- Intelligent Visual Information Processing -- Feature Selection for Identifying Critical Variables of Principal Components Based on K-Nearest Neighbor Rule -- Denoising Saliency Map for Region of Interest Extraction -- Cumulative Global Distance for Dimension Reduction in Handwritten Digits Database -- A New Video Compression Algorithm for Very Low Bandwidth UsingCurve Fitting Method -- The Influence of Perceived Quality by Adjusting Frames Per Second and Bits Per Frame Under the Limited Bandwidth -- An Evolutionary Approach to Inverse Gray Level Quantization -- Visual Data Mining -- Mining Large-Scale News Video Database Via Knowledge Visualization -- Visualization of the Critical Patterns of Missing Values in Classification Data -- Visualizing Unstructured Text Sequences Using Iterative Visual Clustering -- Enhanced Visual Separation of Clusters by M-Mapping to Facilitate Cluster Analysis -- Multimedia Data Mining and Searching Through Dynamic Index Evolution -- Ubiquitous and Mobile Visual Information Systems -- Clustering and Visualizing Audiovisual Dataset on Mobile Devices in a Topic-Oriented Manner -- Adaptive Video Presentation for Small Display While Maximize Visual Information -- An Efficient Compression Technique for a Multi-dimensional Index in Main Memory -- RELT - Visualizing Trees on Mobile Devices -- Auto-generation of Geographic Cognitive Maps for Browsing Personal Multimedia -- Semantics -- Automatic Image Annotation for Semantic Image Retrieval -- Collaterally Cued Labelling Framework Underpinning Semantic-Level Visual Content Descriptor -- Investigating Automatic Semantic Processing Effects in Selective Attention for Just-in-Time Information Retrieval Systems -- News Video Retrieval by Learning Multimodal Semantic Information -- 2D/3D Graphical Visual Data Retrieval -- Visualization of Relational Structure Among Scientific Articles -- 3D Model Retrieval Based on Multi-Shell Extended Gaussian Image -- Neurovision with Resilient Neural Networks -- Applications of Visual Information Systems -- Visual Information for Firearm Identification by Digital Holography -- GIS-Based Lunar Exploration Information System in China -- Semantic 3DCAD and Its Applications in Construction Industry - An Outlook of Construction Data Visualization -- A Fast Algorithm for License Plate Detection -- Applying Local Cooccurring Patterns for Object Detection from Aerial Images -- Enticing Sociability in an Intelligent Coffee Corner -- Geometric and Haptic Modelling of Textile Artefacts -- A Toolkit to Support Dynamic Social Network Visualization -- The Predicate Tree - A Metaphor for Visually Describing Complex Boolean Queries -- Potentialities of Chorems as Visual Summaries of Geographic Databases Contents -- Compound Geospatial Object Detection in an Aerial Image -- Texture Representation and Retrieval Using the Causal Autoregressive Model -- An Approach Based on Multiple Representations and Multiple Queries for Invariant Image Retrieval.

The Visual Information Systems International Conference series is designed to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners from diverse areas of computing including computer vision, databases, human-computer interaction, information security, image processing, information visualization and mining, as well as knowledge and information management to exchange ideas, discuss challenges, present their latest results and to advance research and development in the construction and application of visual information systems. Following previous conferences held in Melbourne (1996), San Diego (1997), Amsterdam (1999), Lyon (2000), Taiwan (2002), Miami (2003), San Francisco (2004) and Amsterdam (2005), the Ninth International Conference on Visual Information Systems, VISUAL2007, was held in Shanghai, China, June 28-29, 2007. Over the years, the visual information systems paradigm continues to evolve, and the unrelenting exponential growth in the amount of digital visual data underlines the escalating importance of how such data are effectively managed and deployed. VISUAL2007 received 117 submissions from 15 countries and regions. Submitted full papers were reviewed by more than 60 international experts in the field. This volume collects 54 selected papers presented at VISUAL2007. Topics covered in these papers include image and video retrieval, visual biometrics, intelligent visual information processing, visual data mining, ubiquitous and mobile visual information systems, visual semantics, 2D/3D graphical visual data retrieval and applications of visual information systems.