9th International Workshop on Combinatorial Image Analysis: Volume 12 Palermo (Italy), May 14-16, 2003.

The 9th International Workshop on Combinatorial Image Analysis was held between 14 and 16 May, 2003 in Palermo (Italy).Prior meetings took place in Paris (France, 1991), Ube (Japan, 1992), Washington DC (USA, 1994), Lyon (France, 1995),Hiroshima (Japan, 1997), Madras (India, 1999), Caen (France, 2000) and Philadelphia (USA, 2001).The workshop focused on digital topology, discrete tomography, array, graph and parallel grammars, cellular automata, tilings and patterns, combinatorial methods in image analysis, combinatorial problems in the discrete plane, integer-only algorithms for image analysis, and non-conventional computing for image analysis, like genetic algorithms and global optimization.We are very pleased that P. Grirtzmann (Technische Universität München), Gabor T. Herman (City University of New York) and Reinhard Klette (The University of Auckland) accepted our invitations to speak at the Workshop.These proceedings contain thirty-one papers and they provide an exciting cross-section of current research in our field.The editors would like to thank the valuable work to the members of the program committee:Alfred M. Bruckstein, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, IsraelJean-Marc Chassery, TIMC-IMAG, FranceKatsushi Inoue, Yamaguchi University, JapanYung Kong, City University of New York, USAKenichi Morita, Hiroshima University, JapanMaurice Nivat, LIAFA, FranceMike Reed, Oxford University, UKRani Siromoney, Madras Christian College, IndiaPatrick S.P. Wang, Northeastern University, USAGerhard Woeginger, University of Twente, The NetherlandsThe editors thank also for the technical help given by Cesare Valenti, University of Palermo, ItalyAndrea Frosini, University of Siena, ItalyLászló Nyúl, University of Szeged, HungaryFinally, we would like to thank Peter Hammer for inviting us to publish the Workshop''s proceedings online as a volume of Electronic Notes in Discrete Mathematics, and for agreeing to devote a special issue of Discrete Applied Mathematics to IWCIA''2003. The DAM special issue will contain a refereed selection of papers submitted by Workshop presenters after the meeting. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]