This volume, containing contributions by experts from all over the world, is a collection of 21 articles which present review and research material describing the evolution and recent developments of various pattern recognition methodologies.

Pattern recognition - evolution of methodologies and data mining, A. Pal and S.K. Pal; adaptive stochastic algorithms for pattern classification, M.A.L. Thathachar and P.S. Sastry; shape in images, K.V. Mardia; decision trees for classification - a review and some new results, R. Kothari and M. Dong; syntactic pattern recognition, A.K. Majumder and A.K. Ray; fuzzy sets as a logic canvas for pattern recognition, W. Pedrycz and N. Pizzi; neural network based pattern recognition, V. David Sanchez; networks of spiking neurons in data mining, K. Cios and D.M. Sala; genetic algorithms, pattern classification and neural networks design, S. Bandyopadhyay et al; rough sets in pattern recognition, A. Skowron and R. Swiniarski; automated generation of qualitative representations of complex objects by hybrid soft-computing methods, E.H. Ruspini and I.S. Zwir); writing speed and writing sequence invariant on-line handwriting recognition, S-H Cha and S.N. Srihari; tongue diagnosis based on biometric pattern recognition technology, K. Wang et al; and other papers.