The conference attracted 72 submissions, with a significant number (37) coming from outside New Zealand. A 32-member international program committee reviewed the submissions, with each paper being read by three committee members. All communications were conducted by email to speed up reviewing and provide rapid feedback to authors.

The final program consisted of two plenary sessions, six paper (oral) sessions, and one poster session. There were no parallel sessions, giving the participants an opportunity to attend all the presentations. The two plenary speakers were Luk Florack (Utrect), on "Duality principles in image processing and analysis", in which image processing was formulated as a measurement process with a topological framework, and Steven Beauchemin (U. Pennsylvania), on "Recent advances in motion understanding", in which the role of motion was discussed within the paradigm of active vision. Four of the paper sessions were led off by a keynote paper, which were given respectively by: S. K. Kopparapu (CSIRO), on "The effect of measurement noise on camera calibration matrix", J. Banks (also of CSIRO), on "Evaluation of new and existing confidence measures for stereo matching", and K. L. Chan (Nanyang Tech. Univ.), who gave two keynote talks, the first on "Regular texture fault detection by Wold-like decomposition", and the second on "Regularity measures for quasi-periodic textures".

To facilitate discussion of the posters, each author was given the opportunity to provide a brief (3 min) oral description of their work. The posters were put up the the first day and remained on display throughout the conference. To promote further interaction, the coffee and lunch breaks were held in the poster presentation room.

An industrial exhibition session was included in the program, with presentations by Silicon Graphics and by Industrial Vision Systems (Auckland). The Active Intelligent Vision laboratory at Tamaki also held an open session where work being done in visual monitoring and guidance of radio-controlled cars was demonstrated.

The proceedings, with 425 pages in total, were printed by UniPrint (Auckland) and contain a significant number of colour images. Copies can be ordered from CITR Tamaki (details below).

A national New Zealand group "Image and Vision Computing New Zealand" was founded during IVCNZ'98. This group applied for IAPR membership shortly after the conference. The IVCNZ steering board consists of David Pairman, Chris Bowman, Phil Bones, Bob Hodgson and Reinhard Klette.

The social program included an excursion by bus to Auckland's scenic west coast, with stops at one of the many vineyards along the way, at Muriwai beach, with its famous gannet colony, and at Cascade Kauri park, with its 700 year-old kauri trees.

For further details, see

http://citr.auckland.ac.nz/~ivcnz98/pdf/Proceedings_Info.pdf
(for a table of contents for the proceedings)

http://citr.auckland.ac.nz/~ivcnz98/
(for the conference programme)

http://citr.auckland.ac.nz/
for information about the Centre for Image Technology and Robotics (CITR).

Acknowledgements

The organisers would like to thank the following: S. Walker, C. Lourdes, S. Manoharn, H. Thiele, U. Guenther (all from The University of Auckland), and W. Page (Massey University). Many others helped to make the conference a success, and we thank them as well.

Reinhard Klette (Chairman)
Georgy Gimel'farb
Ramakrishna Kakarala

Invited Plenary Speakers

Luc Florack,

Department of Computer Science, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Talk title: "Duality Principles in Image Processing and Analysis".

Steven Beauchemin,

GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Talk title: "Recent Advances in Motion Understanding". The talk will include the most recent ideas/paradigms about motion (measurement and interpretation) and its role in active computer vision.

IVCNZ'98 Program Committee

Narendra Ahuja (Urbana, US)

Chi-Fa Chen (Kaohsiung, Taiwan)

Roland T. Chin (Hong Kong, China)

Roger J. Clarke (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Daut Bin Daman (Johor Bahru, Malaysia)

Chiou-Shann Fuh (Taipei, Taiwan)

Robert Haralick (Seattle, US)

Atsushi Imiya (Chiba, Japan)

Anil K. Jain (East Lansing, US)

Yukiko Kenmochi (Ishikawa, Japan)

Murray H. Loew (Washington, US)

Anthony Maeder (Ballarat, Australia)

Aniati Murni (Jakarta, Indonesia)

Ihsin Phillips (Seattle, US)

Dharmendra Sharma (Suva, Fiji)

Robyn Owens (Perth, Australia)

Maria Petrou (Guildford, UK)

Azriel Rosenfeld (College Park, US)

David Y.Y. Yun (Honolulu, US)

Donald Bailey (Palmerston North, NZ)

Phil Bones (Christchurch, NZ)

Chris Bowman (Auckland, NZ)

Roger Browne (Palmerston North, NZ)

Georgy Gimel'farb (Auckland, NZ)

Bob Hodgson (Palmerston North, NZ)

Ram Kakarala (Auckland, NZ)

Reinhard Klette (Auckland, NZ)

Richard Lane (Christchurch, NZ)

Alan McIvor (Auckland, NZ)

S. Manoharan (Auckland, NZ)

Kevin Novins (Dunedin, NZ)

Wyatt Page (Palmerston North, NZ)

David Pairman (NZ)

IVCNZ'98 Organising Committee

Reinhard Klette (Conference Chairman)

Georgy Gimel'farb (Co-Chairman)

Ramakrishna Kakarala (Co-Chairman)

S. Manoharan (Publicity)

Wyatt Page (Document Facilities)

Holger Thiele (Technical Facilities)

Sharon Walker (Treasurer and Conference Logistics)

Cecilia Lourdes (Secretary)