ICIAR 2005, the International Conference on Image Analysis and Recognition, was the second ICIAR conference, and was held in Toronto, Canada. ICIAR is organized annually, and alternates between Europe and North America. ICIAR 2004 was held in Porto, Portugal. The idea of o?ering these conferences came as a result of discussion between researchers in Portugal and Canada to encourage collaboration and exchange, mainly between these two countries, but also with the open participation of other countries, addressing recent advances in theory, methodology and applications. Theresponsetothecallforpapersfor ICIAR2005wasencouraging.From295 full papers submitted, 153 were ?nally accepted (80 oral presentations, and 73 posters). The review process was carried out by the Program Committee m- bersandotherreviewers;allareexpertsinvariousimageanalysisandrecognition areas. Each paper was reviewed by at least two reviewers, and also checked by the conference co-chairs. The high quality of the papers in these proceedings is attributed ?rst to the authors, and second to the quality of the reviews provided by the experts. We would like to thank the authors for responding to our call, andwewholeheartedlythankthe reviewersfor theirexcellentwork, andfortheir timely response. It is this collective e?ort that resulted in the strong conference program and high-quality proceedings in your hands.