After an introduction to the key optimization techniques, the authors introduce their unified framework and demonstrate its advantages in challenging application domains, focusing on the state of the art of multidimensional extensions such as global convergence in particle swarm optimization, dynamic data clustering, evolutionary neural networks, biomedical applications and personalized ECG classification, content-based image classification and retrieval, and evolutionary feature synthesis. The content is characterizedby strong practical considerations, and the book is supported with fully documented source code for all applications presented, as well as many sample datasets. The book will be of benefit to researchers and practitioners working in the areas of machine intelligence, signal processing, pattern recognition, and data mining, or using principles from these areas in their application domains. It may also be used as a reference text for graduate courses on swarm optimization, data clustering and classification, content-based multimedia search, and biomedical signal processing applications.