An image is better than one thousand words; so it was straightforward to apply visual language in the field of computer science. Nowadays everything that appears on a computer screen is an image, regardless of whether it is a word or a picture. Is it possible to realize an e-learning program without working in terms of images? The answer is undoubtedly no, even if several problems arise in this context: the qualitative and quantitative content of the image we need to use for a specific task; the psychological effect on the user, including the level of attention and the correct perception of the image significance. Most of these problems form the basis of image-understanding techniques.

Widespread use of images requires organization of the information in the databank or database, whose dimensions are sometimes so wide as to be too complex to manage; therefore information retrieval techniques arise from this need. The new instruments used in image and/or remote diagnosis, image transmission, the respect of the law in force and the ever-more-relevant image storage capacity required for this task imply the use of techniques of visual language and information retrieval.

The proceedings have been selected for coverage in:
• Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings® (ISTP® / ISI Proceedings)
• Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)

Contents:

• An Introduction to Biometrics and Face Recognition (F Perronnin & J-L Dugelay)
• Lung Edge Detection in Postero Anterior Chest Radiographs (P Campadelli & E Casiraghi)
• The e-Learning Myth and the New University (V Cantoni et al.)
• e-Learning — The Next Big Wave: How e-Learning will Enable the Transformation of Education (R Straub & C Milani)
• Query Morphing for Information Fusion (S-K Chang)
• HER: Application on Information Retrieval (A Casanova & M Fraschini)
• Issues in Image Understanding (V Di Gesú)
• Information System in the Clinical-Health Area (G Madonna)
• and other papers