Computer vision and mathematical methods in medical and biomedical image analysis

Medical imaging and medical image analysisare rapidly developing. While m- ical imaging has already become a standard of modern medical care, medical image analysis is still mostly performed visually and qualitatively. The ev- increasing volume of acquired data makes it impossible to utilize them in full. Equally important, the visual approaches to medical image analysis are known to su? er from a lack of reproducibility. A signi? cant researche? ort is devoted to developing algorithms for processing the wealth of data available and extracting the relevant information in a computerized and quantitative fashion. Medical imaging and image analysis are interdisciplinary areas combining electrical, computer, and biomedical engineering; computer science; mathem- ics; physics; statistics; biology; medicine; and other ? elds. Medical imaging and computer vision, interestingly enough, have developed and continue developing somewhat independently. Nevertheless, bringing them together promises to b- e? t both of these ? elds. We were enthusiastic when the organizers of the 2004 European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) allowed us to organize a satellite workshop devoted to medical image analysis.