Rapid technical advances in medical imaging, including its growing application to drug/gene therapy and invasive/interventional procedures, have attracted significant interest in close integration of research in life sciences, medicine, physical sciences and engineering. This is motivated by the clinical and basic science research requi- ment of obtaining more detailed physiological and pathological information about the body for establishing localized genesis and progression of diseases. Current research is also motivated by the fact that medical imaging is increasingly moving from a primarily diagnostic modality towards a therapeutic and interventional aid, driven by recent advances in minimal-access and robotic-assisted surgery. It was our great pleasure to welcome the attendees to MIAR 2004, the 2nd Int- national Workshop on Medical Imaging and Augmented Reality, held at the Xia- shan (Fragrant Hills) Hotel, Beijing, during August 19 20, 2004. The goal of MIAR 2004 was to bring together researchers in computer vision, graphics, robotics, and medical imaging to present the state-of-the-art developments in this ever-growing research area. The meeting consisted of a single track of oral/poster presentations, with each session led by an invited lecture from our distinguished international f- ulty members. For MIAR 2004, we received 93 full submissions, which were sub- quently reviewed by up to 5 reviewers, resulting in the acceptance of the 41 full - pers included in this volume."

With the rapid increase in the variety and quantity of biomedical images in recent years, we see a steadily growing number of computer vision technologies applied to biomedical applications. The time is ripe for us to take a closer look at the accomplishments and experiences gained in this research subdomain, and to strategically plan the directions of our future research. The scientific goal of our workshop, "Computer Vision for Biomedical Image Applications: Current Techniques and Future Trends" (CVBIA), is to examine the diverse applications of computer vision to biomedical image applications, considering both current methods and promising new trends. An additional goal is to provide the opportunity for direct interactions between (1) prominent senior researchers and young scientists, including students, postdoctoral associates and junior faculty; (2) local researchers and international leaders in biomedical image analysis; and (3) computer scientists and medical practitioners. Our CVBIA workshop had two novel characteristics: each contributed paper was authored primarily by a young scientist, and the workshop attracted an unusually large number of well-respected invited speakers (and their papers). We had the good fortune of having Dr. Ayache of INRIA, France to talk about "Computational Anatomy and Computational Physiology," Prof. Grimson of MIT to discuss "Analyzing Anatomical Structures: Leveraging Multiple Sources of Knowledge," Dr. Jiang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to present their work on "Computational Neuroanatomy and Brain Connectivity," Prof.