The Visual Information Systems International Conference series is designed to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners from diverse areas of computing including computer vision, databases, human–computer interaction, information security, image processing, information visualization and mining, as well as knowledge and information management to exchange ideas, discuss challenges, present their latest results and to advance research and development in the construction and application of visual information systems. Following previous conferences held in Melbourne (1996), San Diego (1997), Amsterdam (1999), Lyon (2000), Taiwan (2002), Miami (2003), San Francisco (2004) and Amsterdam (2005), the Ninth International Conference on Visual Information Systems, VISUAL2007, was held in Shanghai, China, June 28–29, 2007. Over the years, the visual information systems paradigm continues to evolve, and the unrelenting exponential growth in the amount of digital visual data underlines the escalating importance of how such data are effectively managed and deployed. VISUAL2007 received 117 submissions from 15 countries and regions. Submitted full papers were reviewed by more than 60 international experts in the field. This volume collects 54 selected papers presented at VISUAL2007. Topics covered in these papers include image and video retrieval, visual biometrics, intelligent visual information processing, visual data mining, ubiquitous and mobile visual information systems, visual semantics, 2D/3D graphical visual data retrieval and applications of visual information systems.