AVSS is the IEEE conference series on video and signal based surveillance. AVSS was started in 1998 (Genoa, Italy). Following meetings were held in 2001 (Kingston, UK), in 2003 (Miami, USA), in 2005 (Como, Italy), and in 2006 (Sydney, Australia). AVSS 2007 will be held in London on 5-7 September 2007. AVSS is a forum of reference for the field and offers the opportunity to meet and foster collaboration. AVSS has a tradition of participation from the worlds of research, industry, and relevant government agencies. AVSS welcomes contributions in traditional disciplines such as signal processing, image and video processing, audio processing, pattern recognition, and computer vision, and it also gives unique emphasis to cross-disciplinary and visionary papers.

We are pleased to announce that AVSS 2007 will feature the following keynote and overview talks:

Keynote talks
1. Looking at people (Dariu Gavrila, Daimler Chrysler Research & Technology and University of Amsterdam)
2. A journey from signal processing to surveillance (Tsuhan Chen, Carnegie Mellon University)
3. Computer-aided facial reconstruction from skulls (Peter Tu, GE Global Research)
4. Object detection, segmentation and tracking (Andrew Blake, Microsoft Research)

Overview talks
1. Directions in automatic video analysis technology evaluations at NIST (John Garofolo, National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA)
2. Overview of the physical security sector (Andy Coleman, Home Office Scientific Development Branch)
3. Detecting hidden objects: security imaging using millimetre-waves and terahertz (Mike Kemp, Iconal Technology Ltd.)

AVSS 2007 will also feature one challenge and five special sessions:

Challenge: i-LIDS bag and vehicle detection challenge (Organizer: Paul Hosmer, Home Office Scientific Development Branch)

Special sessions
1. 3D face recognition and novel biometrics (Organizer: Ioannis Kakadiaris, University of Houston)
2. Industrial special session (Organizer: Li-Qun Xu, BT)
3. Vision-based gesture and human action recognition (Organizers: Ioannis Patras, Queen Mary, University of London; Edwin Hancock, The University of York)
4. Video systems for retail applications (Organizer: Andrew Senior, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center)
5. Video tracking in complex scenes (Organizer: Fatih Porikli, Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories)