Foreword
We are delighted
to welcome you to this, the 15th British Machine Vision Conference, and
in particular, to Kingston University. The conference continues to grow
from strength to strength, and this year we exceeded our wildest
expectations in receiving 275 paper submissions. The international
standing of the conference continues to be reflected in the growing
number of overseas submissions.
The task of
reviewing was distributed over a team of 69 reviewers, each of whom
reviewed at least 12 papers. The final
selection process at the reviewers meeting in early June presented a
challenging task, and the coordinating role of the area chairs was
pivotal in ensuring the process went smoothly. To address the higher
submission rate, the conference timetable was adjusted to include 42
oral presentations and 56 poster presentations.
We are delighted
to thank our two invited speakers, Professor Pascal Fua from the
L'Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and Dr
Matthew Brand from the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL)
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and our tutorial presenter, Professor Mark
Nixon from Southampton University.
We are grateful
to organisations that sponsor prizes for the conference. Computer
Recognition Systems (CRS) Ltd. is a long-standing supporter of the
conference, and continue to sponsor the prize for the best industrial
paper. The Imaging Faraday Partnership will sponsor the prize for the
best demonstration. Prizes for the best Science paper and the best
poster are sponsored by BMVA. Finally, Image-Metrics will again be
sponsoring the Model Based Vision Prize.
BMVC04 has been
organised by members of the Digital Imaging Research Centre (DIRC) in
the School of Computing and Information Systems at Kingston University,
with support from the Research Office of the Faculty of Technology. The
conference administration and secretariat has been efficiently and
effectively undertaken by Bee-Lian Tang and Lisa Blakey. Our thanks
also go to Sarah Barman, Andreas Hoppe, James Orwell, Paolo Remagnino,
Darrel Greenhill, Ahmed Shihab and Sergio Velastin who have contributed
enormously to the organisation of the conference and production of
these proceedings. Support for the online conference management system
(CAWS) was provided by at the University of Manchester. Finally we
would like to thank the Chairmen and organisers of past BMVCs, and in
particular Richard Harvey (BMVC03), who have collectively contributed
to the folk knowledge that eases the burden on subsequent organisers.
We hope that you
find the conference stimulating and informative, and that you enjoy
your visit to Kingston and its University.
Tim Ellis and
Graeme Jones
Kingston-upon-Thames,
July 2004