The origin of this volume may be traced back to February 1996 when the First International Conference on Visual Information Systems was held. The conference received enthusiastic support from the international research community and provided a timely meeting point between two groups of researchers: those working on image processing, and those working on database and information systems. A steering committee was established consisting of Shi-kuo Chang (University of Pittsburgh), Ramesh Jain (University of California, San Diego), Tosiyasu Kunii (University of Aizu), Clement Leung (Victoria University of Technology), and Arnold Smeulders (University of Amsterdam). It is recognised that visual information systems will permeate all aspects of computing in the future, and their design and construction will require a new approach significantly different from that used to build conventional computing applications systems.