These are the proceedings of the 9th European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV 2006), the premium European conference on computer vision, held in Graz, Austria, in May 2006. Inresponsetoourconferencecall,wereceived811papers,thelargestnumber of submissions so far. Finally, 41 papers were selected for podium presentation and 151 for presentation in poster sessions (a 23. 67% acceptance rate). The double-blind reviewing process started by assigning each paper to one of the 22 area chairs, who then selected 3 reviewers for each paper. After the reviewswerereceived,theauthorswereo?eredthepossibilitytoprovidefeedback on the reviews. On the basis of the reviews and the rebuttal of the authors, the area chairs wrote the initial consolidation report for each paper. Finally, all the area chairs attended a two-day meeting in Graz, where all decisions on acceptance/rejectionweremade. At that meeting,the areachairsresponsiblefor similar sub-?elds thoroughly evaluated the assigned papers and discussed them in great depth. Again, all decisions were reached without the knowledge of the authors' identity.
We are fully aware of the fact that reviewing is always also subjective, and that somegood papers might havebeen overlooked;however,we tried our best to apply a fair selection process. The conference preparation went smoothly thanks to several people. We ?rst wish to thank the ECCV Steering Committee for entrusting us with the orga- zationoftheconference. Wearegratefultotheareachairs,whodidatremendous job in selecting the papers, and to more than 340 ProgramCommittee members and 220 additional reviewers for all their professional e?orts.