For those of you that didn't get a word from the previous acknowledgments, probably you'll find this more understandable. I should start saying thanks to Dr. Reyer Zwiggelaar, who gave me the opportunity to do a research stay at the University of East Anglia, and whose comments and multiple e-mails about my research improved the thesis (perhaps too much). Further, without him, I will not have a detailed segmentation of the MIAS database, as he convinced Dr. Erika Denton to do such task. Thank you Erika! and also thank you very much Reyer!
I also have to say thank you to Dr. Danika Kragic, who inspired me in the use of eigenfaces and PCA related techniques for both the creation of the templates and the false positive reduction step.
Finally, I would also like to mention here the external examiners of this document, who provided successful comments to improve the quality of this work. Moreover, a brief thanks is directed to those anonymous reviewers of my papers who made great comments to improve my work and the name of whom I will never know.