********************************************************************* Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines Special Issue on Medical Applications ********************************************************************* Although the application of evolutionary computation (EC) to medicine is not new, the reporting of new work tends to be distributed among various technical and clinical publications in a somewhat disparate manner. A special issue of Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines satisfies the need for a much needed focus for medical related applications of EC, not only providing a clear definition of the state of the art, but also support to practitioners for whom EC might not be their main area of expertise or experience. Traditionally, medical applications have used straightforward implementations of evolutionary algorithms, such as genetic algorithms, to optimize traditional data analysis in a wide range of medical applications including signal and image processing, expert systems, data mining, etc. More recently, however, exploitation of advanced evolutionary computation paradigms such as genetic programming and artificial immune systems have been applied directly to challenging applications such as diagnosis and monitoring. The aim of this Special Issue is to provide the reader with a snapshot of the current practice and an indication of future trends in this exciting and demanding application area. Subjects will include (but are not limited to) applications of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation to: Medical imaging Medical signal processing Clinical diagnosis and therapy Data mining of medical data and records Clinical expert systems Modeling and simulation of medical processes The publication schedule is as follows: * Submission deadline: October 31, 2006 * Notification of acceptance: February 28, 2007 * Final manuscript: April 30, 2007 Submission procedure: All electronic submissions must be sent to Steve Smith at: sls5@ohm.york.ac.uk Manuscripts should conform to the standard format of the Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machine journal as indicated in the Information for Authors available at the Journal website (www.springer.com/10710). All submissions will be peer reviewed subject to the standards of the journal. Manuscripts based on previously published conference papers must be extended substantially. Electronic submissions in postscript or PDF are strongly preferred. Please send all submissions to one of the guest editors. All enquiries on this special issue should be sent to Steve Smith at: sls5@ohm.york.ac.uk Prospective authors are also invited to send an email to Steve Smith indicating their interest in submitting a paper and the specific topics addressed. Guest editors: Stephen L Smith The University of York, UK Department of Electronics Email: sls5@ohm.york.ac.uk WWW: http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~sls5/ Tel: +44 1904 432351 Fax: +44 1904 433224 Stefano Cagnoni Universita' degli Studi di Parma, Italy Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione E-Mail: cagnoni@CE.UniPR.IT WWW http://www.ce.unipr.it/people/cagnoni/ Tel: +39 (0521) 90 5731 Fax: +39 (0521) 90 5723 Journal Website: http://www.springer.com/10710