CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
 
                     Special Issue of the Journal
                 "Artificial Intelligence in Medicine"
 
                        Theme: MEDICAL IMAGING
 
                    Guest-Editor: Catherine Garbay
                   Lab. TIMC-IMAG, Grenoble, FRANCE
                     http://www-timc.imag.fr/AIM/
 
 
 BACKGROUND
 
 It is the first time that a special issue on medical imaging is to be 
 published by the "Artificial Intelligence in Medicine" Journal. This 
 event acknowledges the potential of the field with respect to the 
 development of sound and innovative AI research. Medical imaging is not
 just one more field of application, but in fact is known to raise 
 challenging questions to the AI community. This is due to the necessity to
 ground the decision-making process within a set of imperfect and incomplete
 perceptions, which reflect a reality that can not be known completely in
 advance. Moreover, the growing wealth of data coming in image form requires
 the development of tools for the intelligent indexing, retrieval and
 extraction of information.
 
 Among these concerns is the necessity to build flexible models, able to
 cope with the changing and unpredictable appearance of objects in images,
 together with the correlated necessity to develop uncertain, incomplete and
 imprecise reasoning tools. Moreover, spatial and temporal reasoning models 
 have to be conceived, to take into account the dimension (2D or more)
 and dynamic nature of the information conveyed by the image; new
 decision-making models finally come from the necessity to fuse data from
 heterogeneous sources and to support hybrid reasoning schemes. As a
 consequence the field of distributed artificial intelligence has been early
 addressed by medical imaging applications. A distributed
 context raises various design issues such as how to represent the various 
 types of data and knowledge sources available, how to plan their processings, 
 and how to control their cooperation, which may involve the specification of 
 dedicated ontologies and problem-solving methods.
 
 OBJECTIVE OF THE SPECIAL ISSUE
 
 The objective behind this special issue on Medical Imaging is rather to
 report on state-of-the-art theoretical and methodological developments.
 
 More specifically, papers are expected to cover one or more of the
 following topics:
   * high level modelling of shapes and objects
   * incomplete, uncertain and imprecise representation and processing
     of image information
   * spatial and temporal reasoning applied to 2D, 3D or dynamic images
   * fusion of data from heterogeneous sources (including anatomical atlases)
   * hybrid reasoning schemes
   * multi-agent design,
     with special emphasis on adaptation and cooperation issues
   * ontologies and problem-solving methods,
     with special emphasis on planning issues
   * intelligent indexing and retrieval of image information
   * knowledge acquisition from image data
 
 GUIDELINES & SCHEDULE
 
 All manuscripts will be evaluated according to their originality, technical
 quality and clarity of presentation by at least two independent referees
 who are authorities in the field.
 
 A manuscript should be about 30 pages excluding tables and figures but
 including the list of references. Manuscripts should be prepared in
 accordance with the journal "submission guidelines" which are available
 from the following web site:
 
 http://www-timc.imag.fr/AIM/
 
 Three copies of a  manuscript should be sent by surface mail before May
 1st, 1999 to:
 
 Catherine GARBAY, Lab. TIMC - IMAG, Institut Bonniot
 Faculte de Medecine - Domaine de la Merci, 38706 La Tronche Cedex - France
 Tel : +33 (0)4 76 54 94 85  Fax : +33 (0)4 76 54 95 49
 email: Catherine.Garbay@imag.fr
 
 Perspective authors are strongly encouraged to contact the guest editor at
 the address above and to declare their intention to participate in the
 special issue as early as possible. To this end, please submit by email a
 tentative title and a short summary before February, 15th, 1999.
 
 IMPORTANT DATES
 
    * February 15, 1999        Submission of tentative title and abstract
             to declare intention to submit paper
    * May 1, 1999              Receipt of full papers.
    * July 30, 1999               Notification of acceptance
    * October 1, 1999             Receipt of final-version of manuscripts
    * June 2000                Publication of AIM special issue