The past decade has seen a rapid growth in the demand for biometric-based - thentication solutions for a number of applications. With signi?cant advances in biometrictechnologyandanincreaseinthenumberofapplicationsincorporating biometrics, it is essential that we bring together researchers from academia and industry as well as practitioners to share ideas, problems and solutions for the development and successful deployment of state-of-the-art biometric systems. The InternationalConference onBiometric Authentication (ICBA 2004)was the ?rst major gathering in the Asia-Paci?c region devoted to facilitating this interaction. We are pleased that this conference attracted a large number of high-quality research papers that will bene?t the international biometrics - search community. After a careful review of 157 submissions, 101 papers were acceptedeitherasoral(35)orposter(66)presentations.Inadditiontothesete- nical presentations, this conference also presented the results and summaries of threebiometric competitions: FingerprintVeri?cationCompetition (FVC 2004), Face Authentication Competition (FAC 2004), and Signature Veri?cation C- petition (SVC 2004). This conference provided a forum for the practitioners to discuss their practical experiences in applying the state-of-the-art biometric technologies which will further stimulate research in biometrics. We aregrateful to Jim L. Wayman, Edwin Rood, Raymond Wong, Jonathon Philips,andFrancisHoforacceptingourinvitationtogivekeynotetalksatICBA 2004. In addition, we would like to express our gratitude to all the contributors, reviewers, program committee and organizing committee members who made this a very successful conference. We also wish to acknowledge the Croucher Foundation, the International Association of Pattern Recognition, IEEE Hong Kong Section, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the National Natural S- ence Foundation in China, and Springer-Verlag for sponsoring this conference.