This collection of papers constitutes the official proceedings of the 12^th International Workshop on Systems, Signals and Image Processing (IWSSIP'05) held at the city of Chalkida, Greece during the 22-24th September 2005. The 12^th International Workshop on Systems, Signals and Image Processing has been organised by the Technological Educational Institute (TEI) of Chalkida, Greece, in co-operation with the IEEE, the IEEE Region 8, the IEE and the EURASIP.

IWSSIP'05 is an International Workshop on the theoretical, experimental and applied signal and image processing techniques and systems which brings together researchers and developers from both academia and industry to report on the latest scientific and theoretical advances, to discuss and debate major issues and to demonstrate state-of-the-art systems. While the development of algorithms and signal/image processing techniques has been a major topic, IWSSIP uniqueness, regarding similar events, lies on the special attention paid to the applied and integral approaches in signal and imaging systems engineering. Especially, multimedia systems and networks engineering involving signal/image processing algorithms and/or techniques/technologies has been a major topic.

IWSSIP is a mature series of successful events in the field of systems and signal/image processing. IWSSIP'05 follows eleven such successful events previously held in Budapest, Manchester, Poznan, Zagreb, Bratislava, Maribor, Bucharest, and Prague. This series of events has formed over the years a growing international community of researchers interested in system level aspects of theoretical and applied signal/image processing algorithms, techniques and technologies with most prominent their application in multimedia systems. IWSSIP'05 functioning as the forum of this international research community has been successful in presenting the current status of research efforts and achievements in many of the most important issues in the field of systems and signal/image processing.

IWSSIP'05 program committee and reviewers from around the world peer reviewed around 120 research papers submitted and selected the most relevant, technically sound, high quality and important papers. The papers presented in the conference cover a broad spectrum of topics from signal/image processing techniques and algorithms, signal/image processing technologies, implementations and applications to multimedia systems, multimedia content processing, multimedia data compression and multimedia networks. The conference, also, had six special sessions focusing on Multi-Model Signal Processing & Applications, Wireless/Ad-hoc Multimedia Networks, Scalable Video Coding (SVC), Information Mining from Complex Signals and Systems, Information Technologies (IT) & their Applications and, finally, Video Coding, Content Processing and Transmission Infrastructure, respectively. Moreover, ten renowned keynote speakers and three renowned tutorial speakers have given their invited lectures covering many important issues of Signals, Coding, Systems and Intelligent Techniques.

This book attempts to present such a rich conference programme in the most comprehensive fashion. The chapters are organized so that links to the conference and special sessions programme are kept whenever possible, but we have mainly attempted to form balanced chapters collecting all relevant papers on major topics in the field of systems and signal/image processing in order that this book could, also, serve as an edited book outlining the current status of research in this field.

On behalf of the editorial team, of the general co-chairs, of the conference, of the conference organizing committee and of the program committee, I would like to thank all the authors, reviewers, sponsors and the conference program committee members for their help and support in putting this book together. I wish, also, to acknowledge the assistance and the effort of Inderscience Publishers in the professional preparation of this book and the CD-ROM proceedings.