Message from the General Co-Chairs
On behalf of the IEEE, we are absolutely delighted to welcome you all to this 20th Anniversary International Conference on Image Processing in Melbourne, Australia. It has been very demanding for us to organise this event over the past 4 years, so we do hope that the results will be informative, rewarding and enjoyable for all participants.
There are a number of novel aspects to this conference, the most obvious being that it is being held in Australia for the very first time. Melbourne is an exciting city with excellent food and entertainment. The Victorian gold rush peaked during the 1880s, by which time Melbourne had become the richest city in the world. This legacy has left Melbourne with many fine buildings and wonderful infrastructure. Indeed, the city was named the most liveable city in the world in 2012. This time of year is ideal for visiting Melbourne and further parts of our continent, and we hope that most participants will take the opportunity to combine the conference with regional touring. Please make sure you get to know our unique Australian fauna and flora at the local wildlife parks - you may even meet some at the conference itself. Finally, we do hope you will find our informal lifestyle and culture appealing and will have the opportunity to relax while here.
On the technical side of the conference, the task of the Technical Chairs and Area Chairs has been extremely demanding. As organisers, we were very concerned that Melbourne was so far away that the participation level would be down. Moreover, a major Computer Vision conference was awarded to Australia in late 2013 and this meant that many of our friends would not go to both conferences. Yet in the end, almost 2200 papers were submitted to ICIP2013 which was an even higher number than for ICIP2012. The conference covers most areas of image processing and we have an exceptional group of keynote speakers and a wide selection of tutorials. As a first for ICIP, we organised a Cell Image Classification competition with a comprehensive dataset of over 50,000 HEp-2 cells and over 14 teams entered their solutions.
ICIP2013 is deeply indebted to our sponsors for their contributions and I hope you will note their support. As General Co-Chairs we wish to thank the entire Organising Committee for their help and continuing support. We would also like to acknowledge Ms Billene Cannon of Conference Management Services who has the incredible record of managing every single ICIP to date - so it is Billene's anniversary as well.
Please enjoy this 20th Anniversary ICIP in Melbourne,
Brian Lovell and David Suter
General Co-Chairs, ICIP2013