Welcome to Gvteborg and SCIA 2003 You are cordially welcome to Gvteborg and SCIA 2003. We are delighted to present an excellent scientific program including not only conventional scientific sessions (oral and poster), but also tutorials on Hidden Markov Modeling and Active Shape Models, and a workshop on Deformable Models. For this, we are bringing together some of the most outstanding investigators in the field of image processing and analysis. We have received 224 submitted papers and accepted 152 for presentation at the oral (75) and poster (77) sessions. Our PC committee has, together with other reviewers, done an excellent job in editing these contributions. We would like to thank all of you who contributed one way or the other to creating an exciting SCIA program. Besides the scientific activities, we have arranged several social events (boat trip, city tour, conference dinner, etc.). We hope that these will contribute in making your stay at the conference and in Gvteborg both pleasant and rewarding. The dark night picture of the Gvteborg harbor and opera house that decorated the SCIA Call for Papers is beautiful, but let us hope that the famous Northern light will shine on us all during these few midsummer days. Again, very welcome to SCIA 2003 and looking forward to seeing you all in Gvteborg. Tomas Gustavsson Josef Bigun For more information please visit: www.hh.se/scia2003