Guest Editor's Introduction: Special Section on the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality 2012

The IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality continues to be the leading venue for publishing the latest Mixed andAugmented Reality research, applications and technologies. This special section presents significantly extended versions of the four best papers of the IEEE ISMAR 2012 proceedings. These papers demonstrate the wide range of topics in Augmented Reality research. IEEE ISMAR 2012 had 143 submissions; each paper was reviewed by at least four experts in the field. An international program committee of 15 AR experts invited reviewers, led discussions, invited a rebuttal by the paper authors and prepared a consensus review. To select the final papers for publication, an in-person two-day PC meeting was held, where each paper was discussed, resulting in an overall acceptance rate of 27%. In an additional selection process, an independent Award Committee reviewed the 10 best ranked submissions again to determine the awards for Best Paper and Honorable Mention. For this special section, the authors of the award papers were invited to submit an extended version of their conference paper, with a clear focus on additional content that expands the scientific contribution of the original conference paper. A standard TVCG reviewing cycle was initiated and all four papers required multiple revisions and reviews.