Book excerpt: This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First Joint Conference; Computer Vision, Virtual Reality and Robotics in Medicine, CVRMed, and Medical Robotics and Computer-Assisted Surgery, MRCAS, held in Grenoble, France, in March 1997. The volume presents 76 regular revised papers and 16 clinical papers selected from a total of 161 submitted full papers. The volume offers highly innovative and promising research results in computer-assisted medicine and medical informatics. Among the areas covered are medical imaging, virtual reality, medical robotics, and computer-integrated therapy and surgery. The book is of relevance to clinicians, medical engineers, and computer scientists.