MICCAI is the premier international conference with in-depth papers on medical image computing, computer-assisted intervention and medical robotics. The multidisciplinary nature of these emerging fields brings together clinicians, bioscientists, computer scientists, engineers, physicists & other researchers who are contributing to, and need to keep abreast of, advances in the methodology and applications.

Medical image computing techniques have a wide range of applications in medicine and bioscience. The clinical applications span non-interventional image interpretation and diagnostics, and a growing number of interventional methods, from minimally invasive techniques to computer-aided and robotic major surgery. Different types of image may require different types of processing, and advances in image acquisition systems continuously open up new possibilities for applications. All of these applications require the manipulation and integration of medical image information. Many applications depend on integration of the image information with sensor data (e.g. from tracking systems), and/or effector control systems (e.g. robots or positioning devices), and/or visual displays or other feedback systems.

The breadth and complexity of different image types and different applications, and the wide range of scientific and clinical backgrounds of those involved, have tended to encourage the development of numerous subgroups working on individual applications. To some extent, this is appropriate, and there is an obvious place for meetings focussed on a specific application. Nevertheless, the applications all draw on a range of shared underlying medical image computing and engineering techniques. Different terminology for the same concepts and methods tends to be adopted by different groups working in isolation. Communication becomes more difficult, unnecessary duplication of effort follows, and cross-fertilisation between applications is reduced. There is a strong need for the unifying forum provided by MICCAI, which is complementary to meetings on specific applications. The wide range of topics of relevance to MICCAI (see below) reflects this cross-disciplinary approach.

Despite the fact that many underlying techniques are the same across different applications, it cannot be too strongly emphasised that validation and further development of techniques nearly always have to occur in the context of specific applications. There are many examples in the literature of a mathematical or scientific technique being presented as an advance without any real clinical or bioscience justification or validation. There is an inevitable tension between the discovery of a tool by a basic scientist or mathematician, that they believe could be useful if applied in some way (but may actually provide an unnecessarily complex or ineffective approach to the practical problem), and the development of a solution to a processing problem by an applications specialist (who may overlook more powerful existing methods that are well understood). MICCAI acknowledges this tension and seeks to bring together the strengths of both approaches.

The focus of MICCAI is thus on methodology for applications, with a strong emphasis on validation within applications. One of the goals is to improve communication between disciplines, to make state-of-the-art methodology as accessible as possible to clinicians and bioscientists, and to help basic scientists understand the detailed requirements in different clinical and bioscience application areas. Understanding is seldom imparted by short presentations and abstracts. The full-length peer reviewed papers that characterise MICCAI are hard work for authors, reviewers and readers, but they are worth the effort. The proceedings are important and completely up-to-date reference works covering the state-of-the-art in the field.

The conference gives equal weight to posters and oral presentations, which are assigned non-overlapping sessions to ensure that all attendees have the opportunity to interact personally with presenters.