We welcome you to the Third Pacific-Rim Symposium on Image and Video Technology (PSIVT 2009), sponsored by the National Institute of Informatics, Microsoft Research, and the Forum for Image Informatics in Japan. PSIVT 2009 was held in Tokyo, Japan, during January 13–16. The main conference comprised eight major themes spanning the field of image and video technology, namely, image sensors and multimedia hardware, graphics and visualization, image and video analysis, recognition and retrieval, multi-view imaging and processing, computer vision applications, video communications and networking, and multimedia processing. To heighten interest and participation, PSIVT also included workshops, tutorials, demonstrations and invited talks, in addition to the traditional technical presentations.

For the technical program of PSIVT 2009, a total of 247 paper submissions underwent a full review process. Each of these submissions was evaluated in a double-blind manner by a minimum of three reviewers. The review assignments were determined by a set of two to four Chairs for each of the eight themes. Final decisions were jointly made by the Theme Chairs, with some adjustments by the Program Chairs in an effort to balance the quality of papers among the themes and to emphasize novelty. Rejected papers with significant discrepancies in review evaluations received consolidation reports explaining the decisions. In the end, there were 39 papers accepted for oral presentation and 57 for poster presentation. The review process was highly selective, yielding an acceptance rate of less than 40%. Because of the limited size of the symposium and the inevitable variability in the review process, we regret that some worthy papers have likely been excluded. However, we believe that a strong set of papers was identified, and an excellent program was assembled. We would like to thank the following organizations for their cooperation in administering PSIVT 2009: ACM SIG Multimedia, IEEE Japan Council, IEEE Computer Society Japan Chapter, IPSJ SIG Computer Vision and Image Media, and IEICE TG Pattern Recognition and Media Understanding. We are also grateful to the International Information Science Foundation, the Tateisi Science and Technology Foundation, the Telecommunications Advancement Foundation, and the Tokyo Convention & Visitors Bureau for their generous support. In addition, we wish to acknowledge a number of people for their invaluable help in putting this symposium together. Many thanks to the Organizing Committee for their excellent logistical management, the Theme Chairs for their rigorous evaluation of papers, the reviewers for their considerable time and effort, and the authors for their outstanding contributions. We also wish to acknowledge the following individuals for their tremendous service to the symposium: Ako Maio, Yoko Imagawa, Sakie Suzuki, Reiko Murano, Ayumi Shimizu, and the volunteer students from the University of Tokyo and Chiba University.