International Conference on Advances in Pattern Recognition (ICAPR 98) at Plymouth represents an important meeting for advanced research in pattern recognition. There is considerable interest in the areas of image processing, medical imaging, speech recognition, document analysis and character recognition, fuzzy data analysis and neural networks. ICAPR 98 is aimed at providing an international platform for invited research in this multi-disciplinary area. It is expected that the conference will grow in future years to include more research contributions that detail state-of the-art research in pattern recognition. ICAPR 98 attracted contributions from different countries of the highest quality. I should like to thank the programme and organising committee for doing an excellent job in organising this conference. The peer reviewed nature of the conference ensured high quality publications in these proceedings. My personal thanks to Mrs. Barbara Davies who served as conference secretary and worked tirelessly in organising the conference. I thank the organising chair for the local arrangements and our should also key-note, plenary and tutorial speakers for their valuable contributions to the conference. I also thank Springer-Verlag for publishing these proceedings that will be a valuable source of research reference for the readers. Finally, I thank all participants who made this conference successful.