Traditionally the APRS has organised a technical meeting every year since its inception in 1990 - a major 3-day refereed conference (DICTA) in odd numbered years and a workshop in even numbered years. This tradition was broken last year when we delayed DICTA by two months to run back to back with ACCV2002. This workshop is therefore what would have been the “even year” meeting, again slipped by a few months. Our plans are to run the next DICTA before the end of 2003, so that we are resynchronised.

After DICTA2002, a membership poll was conducted to determine whether members wanted the workshop to meet the same reviewing standards as DICTA, so that papers receive full academic credit. This motion was overwhelmingly supported, so WDIC2003 was run as an internationally peer reviewed conference with electronic submission, reviewing and publication.

The theme for the keynote address and first oral session is “Medical Applications of Image Analysis.” Papers that are of general interest to the Pattern Recognition and Computer Vision Community appear in the other sessions.

We received a very large number of submissions despite the late advertising and registrations are also strong. As per APRS tradition, registrants at WDIC2003 are given one-year membership of the APRS which includes the newsletter and discounts on APRS and IAPR technical events. I look forward to an exciting technical program and to meeting you all at the workshop.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Anthony Maeder and Clinton Fookes for their excellent support in organising this event. I would also like to express my gratitude to the members of the Technical Committee for their very speedy responses to my reviewing requests just before Christmas. Hope you enjoy WDIC2003! Brian Lovell General Chair of WDIC2003 President of the Australian Pattern Recognition Society

WDIC2003 is the sixth in a series of bi-annual specialist workshops organised by APRS, intended to focus on current work-in-progress in topical areas of interest amongst our members. In keeping with the APRS aspirations for broad coverage of topics relevant to pattern recognition and engagement with a variety of application areas, WDIC2003 was established with a central theme of Medical Imaging, but submissions in other related areas were also invited. It is pleasing to note that the result is an event where the chosen theme is strong and yet is counterbalanced by a similar volume of coverage of other topics. In this way we hope that interests of most members can be addressed at the event.

The theme of Medical Imaging is one that is very popular in the international arena, with major annual meetings run by SPIE, ACR and many others. In Australia, APRS has been associated with previous workshops in this topic run in Ballarat (1998) and Gold Coast (1999), under ARC sponsorship. At these meetings, a network of contacts was established between researchers in university, government and health sectors, and much information was shared on current work and projects. We hoped that WDIC2003 provides an opportunity to maintain some of those links.

The acceptance of papers for WDIC2003 followed a rigorous process to comply with DEST category E1 requirements. All papers were submitted in full for independent review by 3 referees, chosen for their membership of the technical committee according to the relevance of their expertise to the workshop. They were drawn from a wide range of institutions, both within Australia and overseas, and are nationally recognised as qualified experts in their areas. An overall acceptance rate approaching 90% of submissions was achieved, and comments from reviewers were returned to authors where appropriate to allow improvements to be made to their papers for final publication. The resulting proceedings present a nationally significant body of work, with authors from 4 different states represented.

The decision to produce the full proceedings on CD only for this workshop is a new step for APRS, in line with intentions to boost our electronic media and web presence for further outreach to the academic and industry communities. The expedience of this process allowed a short timeline for review and publication to be achieved, and I must thank both the authors and the reviewers for their cooperation and patience in complying. I must also acknowledge the role of Clinton Fookes in assisting with the compilation of the final copy, alongside his active role as publicity coordinator.

Finally, I would like to pay tribute to the leadership of Brian Lovell in conceiving and promoting this event: his dedication to maintaining the active presence and impact of APRS in Australia is to be admired. Anthony Maeder Technical Chair of WDIC2003 Ordinary Member of APRS National Executive Committee