Abstract
Until the rise of electronic means for direct debit, bank cheques have been used as the best form of payment, balancing security and ease of use. Its acceptance and generalized use are result of international agreements that define rules for filling and using it. The fast processing of payments and transactions through safer electronic methods has created the need to reduce its usage over the last years. But despite this progressive reduction, bank cheques still are and will continue to be used; therefore, there is the need to optimize processing mechanisms. The existing automatic cheque processing systems are proprietary and not adapted to the Portuguese language, which is crucial for the cheque analysis and recognition. A prototype of an automatic system for the recognition of the amount in Portuguese bank cheques has been implemented and is being used as a test platform for improved intelligent character recognition algorithms.

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Abstract
Marsyas is a software framework for building efficient complex audio processing systems and applications. Although originally designed for Music Information Retrieval (MIR) tasks in the past few years it has been expanded to include any type of audio analysis or synthesis. Complex Audio processing systems are defined hierarchically through composition using implicit patching. Both the specification of the processing network and the control of it while data is flowing through can be performed at runtime without requiring recompilation. Compilation is required only when new processing objects need to be defined. Therefore the Marsyas runtime provides considerable functionality and flexibility. In this paper we demonstrate how the Marsyas runtime can be accessed using a variety of different ways allowing non-trivial interactions with common software frameworks and environments.

Abstract
The design and implementation of multimedia signal processing systems is challenging especially when efficiency and real-time performance is desired. In many modern applications, software systems must be able to handle multiple flows of various types of multimedia data such as audio and video. Researchers frequently have to rely on a combination of different software tools for each modality to assemble proof-of-concept systems that are inefficient, brittle and hard to maintain. Marsyas is a software framework originally developed to address these issues in the domain of audio processing. In this paper we describe MarsyasX, a new open-source cross-modal analysis framework that aims at a broader score of applications. It follows a data ow architecture where complex networks of processing objects can be assembled to form systems that can handle multiple and different types of multimedia flows with expressiveness and efficiency. Copyright 2008 ACM.

Abstract
Intelligent surveillance is becoming increasingly important for the enhanced protection of facilities such as airports and power stations from various types of threats. We propose a surveillance system architecture based on multiple sources of information to apply on large scale surveillance networks. The main contribution of this paper is the definition of the requirements for a flexible and scalable architecture that supports intelligent surveillance using, alongside video, different sources of information, such as audio or other sensors.

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