13th International Conference on Electrical Bioimpedance and the 8th Conference on Electrical Impedance Tomography 2007 : Icebi 2007, August 29th - September 2nd 2007, Graz, Austria

These proceedings continue the series edited in the framework of the traditional triennial International Conference on El- trical Bio-Impedance (ICEBI), the most important platform for presenting recent scientific achievements in the area of el- th nd trical bio-impedance. The XIII ICEBI was held from Aug. 29 – Sept. 02 2007 at the Graz University of Technology in Graz, Austria. The organizers received 285 abstracts 264 of which were accepted for presentation. The authors of these - pers came from 34 different nations. Due to the kind support by the International Federation for Biomedical Engineering (IFMBE) the proceedings were p- lished by Springer in the proceedings series of the IFMBE. The editors would like to thank the IFMBE for this kind of s- vice which makes the results of the bioimpedance community visible on a very important publishing platform. According to the quality requirements of the IFMBE each paper had to pass a thorough two-stage review by two independent members of the scientific board. As a result 204 papers were selected for being printed in this issue. As already in previous years the ICEBI was held together with the Conference on Electrical Impedance Tomography, the annual meeting for biomedical impedance imaging. Consequently, the proceedings also contain many contributions from this very important and challenging branch of bioimpedance research.

These proceedings continue the series edited in the framework of the traditional triennial International Conference on Electrical Bio-Impedance (ICEBI), the most important platform for presenting recent scientific achievements in the area of electrical bio-impedance. The XIII ICEBI was held from Aug. 29^th – Sept. 02^nd 2007 at the Graz University of Technology in Graz, Austria. As already in previous years the 13^th ICEBI was held together with the 8^th Conference on Electrical Impedance Tomography, the annual meeting for biomedical impedance imaging. Consequently, the proceedings also contain many contributions from this very important and challenging branch of bioimpedance research.

When compared to previous ICEBIs we notice a slight reduction of publications dedicated to purely theoretical models of bioimpedance phenomena while there was a significant increase of presentations on non-contacting and multimodal imaging technologies, cellular applications and specific biomedical applications. Among the latter pulmonary monitoring, multi-segmental BIA and cellular applications should be especially mentioned as obviously being in the transition from basic research to clinical usefulness.

The growth of interest for bioimpedance research is also reflected by two additional facts, namely the foundation of the International Society for Electrical Bio-Impedance (ISEBI) at the preceding conference 2004 in Gdansk and the kind endorsement of the 13^th ICEBI by the IFMBE and its offer to publish scientific papers in the series of IFMBE proceedings.

Seeing all these favourable developments the editorial board is more than optimistic that bio-impedance research will continue its successful way and further contribute to the overall prosperity of biomedical engineering.