A statement of the objectives of the workshop/program and an indication of its relevance, importance, and timeliness:

Computer Vision, together with related fields Computer Graphics and Image Processing has seen increased interest in recent years. This has been driven by a combination of progress in theory, new applications and cheaper HW. New discoveries in theory and methods has made computer vision applicable in non-engineered, natural environments. Current hot applications include surveillance, identification, medicine etc. Recent progress in hardware has taken vision from requiring expensive special purpose HW (e.g. Datacube) to making real time processing of video streams practical on inexpensive consumer PC's.

Computer Vision is distinct from its sister disciplines in that it seeks to recover information (often 3D geometric) from it's 2D projection in images, while Graphics visualizes 2D images from known 3D models, and Image Processing enhances 2D images into modified 2D images. The inverse nature of the Computer Vision problem makes it harder than the two other, and it is only recently that e.g. methods from uncalibrated vision has turned into useful applications pursued by new companies (e.g. INRIA spinoff Realviz and Oxford University's 2D3). While Computer Graphics and Image Processing have longstanding mainstream use (dollars spent on computer games recently surpassed feature movies), Computer Vision only now stands at the brink of making mainstream impact. It is therefore fitting and timely to schedule a Computer Vision workshop in 2006 after the two successful 2004 Mathematical Image Processing (04w5512) and Visualization/Computer Graphics (04w5043) workshops.

This workshop seeks to bring together researchers from currently hot areas, and exchange ideas through a regular workshop format (research topic talks and discussion) as well as through integrating survey talks and application/lab sessions. The latter we hope will give this workshop a distinct flavor and make participants leave the event with a well rounded knowledge spanning both theoretical and practical applied aspects of current research.

For the lab session and tutorials/surveys we will draw on our previous experiences with such events, e.g. at IEEE Virtual Reality 03, ICCV '99, ISPRS'96
http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~vis/VR2003tut/
http://www.maths.lth.se/matematiklth/personal/andersp/tutorial/
http://www.maths.lth.se/matematiklth/personal/andersp/eefn/