The 6th International Conference on Medical Imaging and Computer-Assisted Intervention,MICCAI2003,washeldinMontr ́ eal,Qu ́ ebec,CanadaattheF- rmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel during November 15–18, 2003. This was the ?rst time the conference had been held in Canada. The proposal to host MICCAI 2003 originated from discussions within the Ontario Consortium for Ima- guided Therapy and Surgery, a multi-institutional research consortium that was supported by the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Ministry of E- erprise, Opportunity and Innovation. The objective of the conference was to o?er clinicians and scientists a - rum within which to exchange ideas in this exciting and rapidly growing ?eld. MICCAI 2003 encompassed the state of the art in computer-assisted interv- tions, medical robotics, and medical-image processing, attracting experts from numerous multidisciplinary professions that included clinicians and surgeons, computer scientists, medical physicists, and mechanical, electrical and biome- cal engineers. The quality and quantity of submitted papers were most impressive. For MICCAI 2003 we received a record 499 full submissions and 100 short c- munications. All full submissions, of 8 pages each, were reviewed by up to 5 reviewers, and the 2-page contributions were assessed by a small subcomm- tee of the Scienti?c Review Committee. All reviews were then considered by the MICCAI 2003 Program Committee, resulting in the acceptance of 206 full papers and 25 short communications. The normal mode of presentation at MICCAI 2003 was as a poster; in addition, 49 papers were chosen for oral presentation.

The fifth international Conference in Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI 2002) was held in Tokyo from September 25th to 28th, 2002. This was the first time that the conference was held in Asia since its foundation in 1998. The objective of the conference is to offer clinicians and scientists the opportunity to collaboratively create and explore the new medical field. Specifically, MICCAI offers a forum for the discussion of the state of art in computer-assisted interventions, medical robotics, and image processing among experts from multi-disciplinary professions, including but not limited to clinical doctors, computer scientists, and mechanical and biomedical engineers. The expectations of society are very high; the advancement of medicine will depend on computer and device technology in coming decades, as they did in the last decades. We received 321 manuscripts, of which 41 were chosen for oral presentation and 143 for poster presentation. Each paper has been included in these proceedings in eight-page full paper format, without any differentiation between oral and poster papers. Adherence to this full paper format, along with the increased number of manuscripts, surpassing all our expectations, has led us to issue two proceedings volumes for the first time in MICCAI’s history. Keeping to a single volume by assigning fewer pages to each paper was certainly an option for us considering our budget constraints. However, we decided to increase the volume to offer authors maximum opportunity to argue the state of art in their work and to initiate constructive discussions among the MICCAI audience.

The 7th International Conference on Medical Imaging and Computer Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2004, was held in Saint-Malo, Brittany, France at the “Palais du Grand Large” conference center, September 26–29, 2004. The p- posaltohostMICCAI2004wasstronglyencouragedandsupportedbyIRISA, Rennes. IRISA is a publicly funded national research laboratory with a sta? of 370,including150full-timeresearchscientistsorteachingresearchscientistsand 115 postgraduate students. INRIA, the CNRS, and the University of Rennes 1 are all partners in this mixed research unit, and all three organizations were helpful in supporting MICCAI. MICCAI has become a premier international conference with in-depth - pers on the multidisciplinary ?elds of medical image computing, comput- assisted intervention and medical robotics. The conference brings together cl- icians, biological scientists, computer scientists, engineers, physicists and other researchers and o?ers them a forum to exchange ideas in these exciting and rapidly growing ?elds. The impact of MICCAI increases each year and the quality and quantity of submitted papers this year was very impressive. We received a record 516 full submissions (8 pages in length) and 101 short communications (2 pages) from 36 di?erent countries and 5 continents (see ?gures below). All submissions were reviewed by up to 4 external reviewers from the Scienti?c Review C- mittee and a primary reviewer from the Program Committee. All reviews were then considered by the MICCAI 2004 Program Committee, resulting in the acceptance of 235 full papers and 33 short communications.

The two-volume set LNCS 3749 and LNCS 3750 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2005, held in Palm Springs, CA, USA, in October 2005. Based on rigorous peer reviews the program committee selected 237 carefully revised full papers from 632 submissions for presentation in two volumes. The first volume includes all the contributions related to image analysis and validation, vascular image segmentation, image registration, diffusion tensor image analysis, image segmentation and analysis, clinical applications - validation, imaging systems - visualization, computer assisted diagnosis, cellular and molecular image analysis, physically-based modeling, robotics and intervention, medical image computing for clinical applications, and biological imaging - simulation and modeling. The second volume collects the papers related to robotics, image-guided surgery and interventions, image registration, medical image computing, structural and functional brain analysis, model-based image analysis, image-guided intervention: simulation, modeling and display, and image segmentation and analysis.

The two-volume set LNCS 5761 and LNCS 5762 constitute the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2009, held in London, UK, in September 2009. Based on rigorous peer reviews, the program committee carefully selected 259 revised papers from 804 submissions for presentation in two volumes. The first volume includes 125 papers divided in topical sections on cardiovascular image guided intervention and robotics; surgical navigation and tissue interaction; intra-operative imaging and endoscopic navigation; motion modelling and image formation; image registration; modelling and segmentation; image segmentation and classification; segmentation and atlas based techniques; neuroimage analysis; surgical navigation and robotics; image registration; and neuroimage analysis: structure and function.

The two-volume set LNCS 4190 and LNCS 4191 constitute the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2006. The program committee carefully selected 39 revised full papers and 193 revised poster papers for presentation in two volumes. This second volume collects 118 papers related to segmentation, validation and quantitative image analysis, brain image processing, and much more.

This title is part of a two-volume set that constitute the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2007. Coverage in this second volume includes computer assisted intervention and robotics, visualization and interaction, neuroscience image computing, computational anatomy, innovative clinical and biological applications, general biological imaging computing, computational physiology.

The 11th International Conference on Medical Imaging and Computer Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2008, was held at the Helen and Martin Kimmel Center of New York University, New York City, USA on September 6–10, 2008. MICCAI is the premier international conference in this domain, with - depth papers on the multidisciplinary ?elds of biomedical image computing and analysis, computer assisted intervention and medical robotics. The conference brings together biological scientists, clinicians, computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians, physicists and other interested researchers and o?ers them a forum to exchange ideas in these exciting and rapidly growing ?elds. The conference is both very selective and very attractive: this year we - ceived a record number of 700 submissions from 34 countries and 6 continents, fromwhich258papers were selectedfor publication,whichcorrespondsto a s- cess rate of approximately 36%. Some interesting facts about the distribution of submitted and accepted papers are shown graphically at the end of this preface. The paper selection process this year was based on the following procedure, which included the introduction of several novelties over previous years. 1. A ProgramCommittee (PC) of 49 members was recruited by the Program Chairs,to getthenecessarybody ofexpertiseandgeographicalcoverage.All PC members agreed in advance to participate in the ?nal paper selection process. 2. Key words grouped in 7 categories were used to describe the content of the submissions and the expertise of the reviewers.

The three-volume set LNCS 6891, 6892 and 6893 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2011, held in Toronto, Canada, in September 2011. Based on rigorous peer reviews, the program committee carefully selected 251 revised papers from 819 submissions for presentation in three volumes. The second volume includes 83 papers organized in topical sections on diffusion weighted imaging, fMRI, statistical analysis and shape modeling, and registration.

The three-volume set LNCS 7510, 7511, and 7512 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2012, held in Nice, France, in October 2012. Based on rigorous peer reviews, the program committee carefully selected 252 revised papers from 781 submissions for presentation in three volumes. The first volume includes 91 papers organized in topical sections on abdominal imaging, computer-assisted interventions and robotics; computer-aided diagnosis and planning; image reconstruction and enhancement; analysis of microscopic and optical images; computer-assisted interventions and robotics; image segmentation; cardiovascular imaging; and brain imaging: structure, function and disease evolution.