The 18th International Workshop on Combinatorial Image Analysis IWCIA'17, will be held June 19-21, 2017, in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. The Workshop will include keynote talks, contributed papers, and a poster session.

WCIA'17 is the eighteenth of a series of international meetings on combinatorial image analysis. It will take place in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, June 19-21, 2017. Previous meetings were held in Paris (France, 1991), Ube (Japan, 1992), Washington DC (USA, 1994), Lyon (France, 1995), Hiroshima (Japan, 1997), Madras (India, 1999), Caen (France, 2000), Philadelphia (USA, 2001), Palermo (Italy, 2003), Auckland (New Zealand, 2004), Berlin (Germany, 2006), Buffalo, NY (USA, 2008),Playa del Carmen (Mexico, 2009), Madrid (Spain, 2011), Austin (Texas, 2012), Brno (Czech Republic, 2014), and Kolkata (India, 2015) 

Image analysis is a scientific discipline providing theoretical foundations and methods for solving problems appearing in a wide range of areas, as diverse as medicine, robotics, defense, and security. As a rule, the processed data are discrete; therefore, the "discrete approach" to image analysis appears to be a natural one and has an increasing importance. It is based on studying combinatorial properties of the considered digital data sets. Combinatorial image analysis often features various advantages (in terms of efficiency and accuracy) over the more traditional approaches based on continuous models requiring numeric computation. 

The scientific program of the workshop will consist of keynote talks, contributed papers, and posters. 

The conference proceedings will be published in the Springer's "Lecture Notes in Computer Science" series. 

After the Workshop, the authors of the best ranked papers will be invited to submit extended versions of their works for publication in special journal issues. A tematic special issue ofInformation Sciences - Elsevier (impact factor 3.364) has already been arranged. 

PROCEEDINGS: 
The proceedings will be published in Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Springer). 

SPECIAL JOURNAL ISSUE: 
After the conference, all authors will be invited to submit substantially extended versions of their papers to a special journal issue of Information Sciences (Elsevier) - impact factor 3.364. 

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: 

• Alfred Bruckstein (Technion-IIT, Israel) 

• Edwin Hancock (University of York, UK) 

• Marc van Kreveld (Utrecht University, Netherlands) 

• Christian Ronse (Université de Strasbourg, France) 

• Günter Rote (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany) 

VENUE: 
Plovdiv, the second largest Bulgarian city, is one of the oldest cities in Europe with rich cultural heritage. It has been selected as a European Cultural Capital for 2019.

SPECIAL TRACK ON APPLICATIONS:
In addition to the theoretical research papers, a Special Track on Applications will be organized. The accepted papers will be published by Research Publishing Services or by a similar publisher.