ICIAR 2006, the International Conference on Image Analysis and Recognition, was the third ICIAR conference, and was held in P ́ ovoa de Varzim, Portugal. ICIARisorganizedannually,andalternatesbetweenEuropeandNorthAmerica. ICIAR 2004 was held in Porto, Portugal and ICIAR 2005 in Toronto, Canada. The idea of o?ering these conferences came as a result of discussion between researchers in Portugal and Canada to encourage collaboration and exchange, mainlybetweenthesetwocountries,butalsowiththeopenparticipationofother countries, addressing recent advances in theory, methodology and applications. The response to the call for papers for ICIAR 2006 was higher than the two previous editions. From 389 full papers submitted, 163 were ?nally accepted (71 oral presentations, and 92 posters). The review process was carried out by the Program Committee members and other reviewers; all are experts in various image analysis and recognition 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, and we wholeheartedly thank the reviewers for their excellent work and for their timely response. It is this collective e?ort that resulted in the strong conference program and high-quality proceedings in your hands.