2nd International Conference on Visual Information Systems
 
               VISUAL'97
               15-17 December 1997
    Sea Lodge Hotel, San Diego, California, USA
 
(Postscript version of the Visual '97 CFP is available from:
    http://vision.ucsd.edu/visual97/call.ps.Z)
 
Present day information systems are mainly based on alphanumeric
information. The effective use of visual information for
organizational applications has been limited and mostly confined to
highly specialized applications.  Visual information systems (VIS)
will not only substantially enhance the value and usability of
existing information, but will also open up a new horizon of
previously untapped information sources. Future information systems in
commercial and scientific applications will have a high visual
content, and it is necessary to integrate the visual and image
components into the architecture of o rganizational information
systems. It is expected that VIS will supersede existing Information
Systems, while maintaining all the strengths and fulfilling all the
functions of the latter.  Although there has always been a demand for
visual information, th e technology for such systems were either
insufficiently mature or unavailable in the past.  VIS is now becoming
increasingly feasible because of rapid advances in hardware and
software technologies.  The construction of VIS represents a radical
departure from building conventional systems, and many novel,
fundamental, and architectural issues will need to be addressed. The
conference will focus attention on the application and management of
visual inf ormation and will include, but is not restricted to, the
following topics:
    * Visual information systems paradigms and architecture
    * Content-based indexing, search and retrieval
    * Image databases
    * Visual data modelling and integration
    * Memory organization, management and storage models
    * Feature (invariant) recognition and content extraction
    * Picture description, representation and indexing languages
    * Query models, paradigms, and languages for visual
          information retrieval
    * Image query processing and optimization
    * Support environment for visual information systems implementation
    * Integration of visual and non-visual information
    * Parallel processing in visual information systems
    * Image crawling and the net
    * Authoring image information presentations
    * Compression and delivery of visual information
    * Specific applications areas of visual information systems
 
Both work in progress as well as fully developed systems will be of
interest to the conference.
 
The conference is organized in cooperation with the University of Aizu,
University of California, San Diego, University of Pittsburgh, and
Victoria University of Technology.
 
PAPER SUBMISSION

Intending authors are requested to fill in the Pre-submission interest
form at http://vision.ucsd.edu/visual97/interest.html.
 
Authors should submit three copies of full paper of no more than 25
double-spaced pages by 1 April 1997 to the Program Chair:
    Ramesh Jain
    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
    University of California, San Diego
    9500 Gilman Drive
    La Jolla, CA 92093-0407
 
The first page should include the authors' names, affiliation,
telephone and fax numbers, postal and email addresses and an abstract.
Authors are encouraged to submit the papers electronically in
Postscript form (see the Instructions for Authors at
http://vision.ucsd.edu/visual97/authors.html).  Papers will be
reviewed internationally. Detailed instructions for manuscript
preparation will be sent at the time of acceptance notification, and
will also be available from the Web page.
 
Accepted papers must be presented at the Conference with the
presenting author registering as a delegate in order for the paper to
be included in the proceedings. Conference proceedings will be
published and distributed to participants at the conference. It is
also planned to publish the papers in book form after the conference.
 
IMPORTANT DATES

Papers due:             1 April 1997
Notification of acceptance:     1 July 1997
Camera ready paper due:     1 September 1997
Conference:             15-17 December 1997
 
GENERAL CHAIR

    Shi-Kuo Chang, University of Pittsburgh, USA
    E-mail: chang@cs.pitt.edu
 
GENERAL CO-CHAIRS

    Tosiyasu Kunii, University of Aizu, Japan
    E-mail: kunii@u-aizu.ac.jp
 
    Erich Neuhold, T.H. Darmstadt &  GMD-IPSI, Germany
    E-mail: neuhold@darmstadt.gmd.de
 
PROGRAM CHAIR

    Ramesh Jain, University of California, San Diego, California, USA
    E-mail: jain@ece.ucsd.edu
 
PROGRAM CO-CHAIRS

    Clement Leung, Victoria University of Technology, Melbourne,
Australia
    E-mail: clement@matilda.vut.edu.au
 
    Arnold Smeulders, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
    E-mail: smeulders@wins.uva.nl
 
PROGRAM COMMITTEE

    Alberto Del Bimbo, Universita degli Studi di Firenze, Italy
    Christos Faloutsos, University of Maryland, USA
    Athula Ginige, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
    William Grosky, Wayne State University, USA
    Wendy Hall, University of Southampton, UK
    Yannis Ioannidis, University of Wisconsin, USA
    Horace Ip, City University, Hong Kong
    Rangachar Kasturi, Pennsylvania State University, USA
    Robert Laurini, INSA-Lyon, France
    Kingsley Nwosu, Lucent Technologies, USA
    S. Panchanathan, University of Ottawa, Canada
    Dragutin Petkovich, IBM Almaden Research Center, USA
    Amit P. Sheth, University of Georgia, USA
    Ishwar K. Sethi, Wayne State University, USA
    Masao Sakauchi, University of Tokyo, Japan
    Stephen Smoliar, FX Palo Alto Laboratory, USA
    Wu Jian Kang, National University of Singapore, Singapore
 
Further information and updates are available on the World Wide Web at:
http://vision.ucsd.edu/visual97/ or by contacting:
 
        Visual '97 Conference Secretariat
        c/o Ms. Edna Nerona
        Department of Electrical Engineering
        University of California
        San Diego, California, USA
        E-mail: nerona@ece.ucsd.edu 
 
The conference is organized in cooperation with the IEEE (approval
pending) and the ACM (approval pending), and TC12 for multi-media
information processing of the IAPR (approval pending).