Computer Vision has now reached a level of maturity that allows us not only to perform research on individual methods but also to build fully integrated computer vision systems of a signi cant complexity. This opens up a number of new problems related to architectures, systems integration, validation of - stems using benchmarking techniques, and so on. So far, the majority of vision conferences have focused on component technologies, which has motivated the organization of the First International Conference on Computer Vision Systems (ICVS). It is our hope that the conference will allow us not only to see a number of interesting new vision techniques and systems but hopefully also to de ne the research issues that need to be addressed to pave the way for more wide-scale use of computer vision in a diverse set of real-world applications. ICVS is organized as a single-track conference consisting of high-quality, p- viously unpublished, contributed papers on new and original research on c- puter vision systems. All contributions will be presented orally. A total of 65 papers were submitted for consideration by the conference. All papers were - viewed by three reviewers from the program committee. Thirty-two of the papers were selected for presentation. ICVS'99 is being held at the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium and Convention Centre, in Las Palmas, on the lovely Canary Islands, Spain. The setting is spri- like, which seems only appropriate as the basis for a new conference.