Special issue on ICPR 2014 awarded papers

We, the Guest Editors of this special issue of Pattern Recognition Letters are pleased to share these contributions with you. The papers included here are based on work from the 22nd International Conference on Pattern Recognition (IAPR) in Stockholm, Sweden, held August 24–28, 2014. The papers selected for this special issue were those winning one of the IAPR awards, as well as one paper by a former student of the winner of the KS Fu Prize, Prof. Jitendra Malik. Taken together, this body of work represents some of the finest research being conducted by the IAPR community worldwide, it builds on a rich legacy of accomplishment by the entire community, and it offers a view to the future, to where we are going as a scientific community.For each of the award-winning papers, the authors were asked to revise and extend their contributions to full journal length and to provide true added value vis-a-vis the original conference submission. In some cases, the authors elected to modify the titles slightly, and in some cases the list of authors has also been modified. The resulting manuscripts were sent out for full review by a different set of referees than those who reviewed the conference versions. The process, including required revisions, was in accordance with the standing editorial policy of Pattern Recognition Letters, resulting in the final versions accepted and appearing here. These are thoroughly vetted, high-caliber scientific contributions.It has been our honor to serve as Guest Editors for this special issue. We would like to thank the Editors of Pattern Recognition Letters for allowing us this opportunity. We are especially grateful to Dr. Gabriella Sanniti di Baja for her enthusiasm, support, and her willingness to keep prodding us along to bring the special issue through to completion. We would also like to thank all of those who reviewed the papers, both originally for the conference and subsequently for the journal, and those who served on the ICPR awards and KS Fu Prize committees.Finally, we express our heartfelt gratitude to all of the authors for taking the time to prepare these versions for our collective enlightenment, sharing their knowledge, innovation, and discoveries with the rest of us.