CALL FOR PAPERS
 Pattern Analysis and Applications

         Special Issue on
 Document Image Analysis and Recognition
     Spring 2000

 Guest Editor, Adnan Amin, University of New South Wales 
 School of Computer Science and Engineering, Sydney, Australia

      INVITATION TO CONTRIBUTE 

 Optical character recognition and document image analysis have become very 
 important areas of research. Advanced computer and communication technologies 
 now offer better ways to store, retrieve, and distribute this information. 
 Document Image Analysis and Recognition (DIAR) research provides the technology 
 for automated systems for extracting and organizing information from paper based 
 documents. Generally, these applications apply image processing and pattern recognition
 techniques. A document image may contain text, graphics, pictures, or a combination 
 of these.  Some commercial products are already available such as `OCR' systems for 
 reading pages of machine-printed text, but research is still required to improve 
 their performance on the full range of real-world variability in typography, image 
 quality, and context. Performance evaluation of DIAR systems requires experimental 
 design, a large train and test database, and sophisticated analysis of the results.

 The aim of this special issue is to showcase the state-of-the-art achievements in DIAR.
 Submitted papers should report the solution of a significant open problem: theoretical,
 algorithmic, and systems-architectural studies are welcome, as are papers describing 
 practical applications supported by performance evaluation on a large scale.

 Topics appropriate for this special issue include, but are not limited to:
      o   Document analysis algorithms and tools
      o   Physical and logical page/image segmentation
      o   Character and symbol recognition methods
      o   Pre- and Post-processing algorithms
      o   Graphical object recognition (e.g. maps and engineering drawings)
      o   System performance measures
      o   Recognition/Classification methodologies for DIAR systems
      o   Innovative and industrial applications

 Send four copies of your manuscript (marked "DIAR Special Issue") by April 1, 1999 to 
 the following address. 
      Sameer Singh, Editor-in-Chief, Pattern Analysis and Applications
      Department of Computer Science, University of Exeter, EXETER EX4 4PT, UK

 For paper submission instructions to authors please see:   
 http://www.soc.plym.ac.uk/soc/sameer/paa.htm