CALL FOR PAPERS SPECIAL ISSUE ON IMAGE AND VIDEO PROCESSING FOR EMERGING INTERACTIVE MULTIMEDIA SERVICES SEPTEMBER 1998 The access to digital image and video information is becoming an integral part of many Multimedia applications today. Within this context the efficient and functional coding of images and video as well as the sophisticated pre- and postprocessing of the images are increasingly important. Examples are the segmentation of 2D or 3D images and video for content-based coding and representation in the context of the MPEG-4 or JPEG 2000 standards as well as the conversion between various scanning formats for display. The multi-functional coding of the visual information is a desirable feature to not only provide an efficient representation of the information itself - but also to enable additional Multimedia functionalities, such as bitstream scaleability, object-based access and representation, bitstream editing, and related. Further, as more and more digital visual information exists on various servers over the world, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify and access the information. There is a demand for powerful search strategies which can be used to identify images and video based on ėvisual cluesî in addition to pure textural descriptions. In this context the most recent MPEG standardization activity, MPEG-7, envisions the standardization of a "Multimedia Content Description Interface" which will address the description, identification, and access of audio-visual information. Last not least the design of sophisticated interfaces to allow the user to interact appropriately with the Multimedia content provides an increasing challenge. The objective of the Special Issue is to provide an overview on recent technological trends, key enabling technologies and standards for emerging Multimedia image and video services and applications in the context, but not restricted to, the emerging ITU-T H.263/L, ISO JPEG 2000, ISO MPEG-4 and ISO MPEG-7 activities. Areas of interest are targeted for both real-time and non real-time image and video applications and include, but are not limited to: * Supervised and unsupervised image and video segmentation * Identification and tracking of objects and regions in scenes * Efficient coding of 2D and 3D image and video content * Multi-functional coding of images and video * 2D and 3D image and video pre- and post-processing * Feature-based image/video query Multimedia image and video content manipulation * Representation of 2D and 3D visual information in Multimedia applications * Human factors in interactive Multimedia applications Guest Editors: Prof. King N. Ngan Dep. Electrical & Electronic Engineering University of Western Australia Nedlands WA 6907, Australia Tel: +61-8-9380-1245, Fax: +61-8-9380-1065 Email: king@ee.uwa.edu.au Dr. Thomas Sikora Image Processing Department Heinrich-Hertz-Institute (HHI) Berlin GmbH Einsteinufer 37, 10587 Berlin, Germany Tel: +49-30-31002-622, Fax: +49-30-392-7200 Email: sikora@hhi.de Prof. Ming-Ting Sun Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Box 352500 University of Washington Seattle, Washington 98195, U.S.A. Tel: +1-206-616-8690, Fax: +1-206-543-3842 Email: sun@ee.washington.edu All manuscripts should be submitted before 15 October 1997, to one of the guest editors listed above. All manuscripts should conform to the standard formats as indicated in the latest ėInformation for Authors printed in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS FOR VIDEO TECHNOLOGY. --