Welcome to the VIIth APRS conference on Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications, held this year in Sydney, Australia, December 10-12th 2003. The previous editions of DICTA were held in 1991 (Melbourne), 1993 (Sydney), 1995 (Brisbane), 1997 (Auckland), 1999 (Perth), and 2002 (Melbourne).

Thanks to a lot of work and persistence over the years from APRS members and executive, DICTA is now established as the major regular conference for image-related fields in Australia. It is the place for publishing new and exciting results and of course to meet both established and young colleagues.

This year we received a large number of submissions (155), a significant proportion of whom came from overseas, and we went for a more exhaustive round of reviews. Each paper was sent to least 3 members of the international Program Committee. We've also decided to accept a smaller number of papers (108), to continue to self-publish in quality paper form, to produce this CD-ROM which you are now browsing, and to publish the proceedings on the Web at no cost after the conference itself is finished. Authors also retain the copyright of their work and so can post their papers on their own web site if they so wish.

This year and for the first time, DICTA is being held in conjunction with ANZIIS, the Australia-New Zealand Intelligent Information Systems conference. There are obvious synergies between the two communities, and it is through the vision of Anthony Maeder and Brian Lovell that this was made possible. As you have no doubt noticed, you can browse the ANZIIS proceedings on this CD-ROM as well as those of DICTA.

I would like to thank a large number of people, first and foremost the 261 authors and co-authors who took time and care to write their papers (most of them to the right specifications!); all the sponsors who not only made the event more affordable for all the delegates, but also made it brighter and more interesting through their contribution ; the 5 invited speakers: Professor Nicholas Ayache (INRIA, France), Richard Hartley (ANU, Australia), Henk Heijmans (CWI, The Netherlands), Thomas Huang (UIUC, USA), and Ray Jarvis (Monash, Australia) who accepted invitations to come and present their work at this conference ; and the 34 members of the Technical Committee headed by Changming Sun who through their timely efforts greatly improved the material of this conference. I'd also like to thank the student volunteers who helped with the smooth running of the conference, the members of the Local Organizing Committee who, it seems, brought this conference about by sheer willpower. Special thanks to Briana Elwood at CSIRO publishing who worked very hard to make the proceedings look as good as they do now, to Richard van de Stadt for his web submission package, CyberChair, which we used. We thank Valentina Jones, Bhautik Joshi, Vijay Lakshmanan, and Peter Saunders for their help during the organisation of this conference and most especially Liz Gorry, the conference secretary, who worked tirelessly for many months to make sure things would just work.

I sincerely hope you will benefit from this set of proceedings, and if you attended DICTA 2003, that you had an excellent time there.