Information systems with an abundance of graphics data are growing rapidly due to advances in data storage technology, the development of multimedia communications across networks, and the fact that parallel computers are leading to faster image processing systems. This book addresses image information retrieval and spatial reasoning using an approach called Symbolic Projection, which supports descriptions of the image content on the basis of the spatial relationships between the pictorial objects. Image information systems have a wide variety of applications, including information retrieval on the World Wide Web, medical pictorial archiving, computer-aided design, robotics, and geographical information systems, and this book is comprehensively illustrated with examples from these areas. Symbolic Projection now forms the basis of an enormous number and range of information retrieval algorithms, and also supports query-by-picture and qualitative spatial reasoning. Both authors are international experts in the field, and the book will serve as an excellent source for those working in multimedia systems and image information systems who wish to find out more about this exciting area.