The MICCAI Conferences have their roots and origin in three separate but related conferences beginning in the early 1990s.  These three annual conferences were:

• Visualization in Biomedical Computing (VBC)
• Computer Vision and Virtual Reality in Robotics and Medicine (CVRMed)
• Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery (MRCAS)

These three conferences merged into a single annual conference in 1998, named the MICCAI Conference, which has become the premier conference in the field.  General topics of the conference include medical image computing, computer-assisted intervention, guidance systems and robotics, visualization and virtual reality, computer-aided diagnosis, bioscience and biology applications, specific imaging systems, and new imaging applications.  The conference series includes three days of oral presentations and poster sessions.  The quality and importance of posters are considered to be on a par with oral platform presentations.  All oral and poster papers are published in the MICCAI Conference Proceedings, which is having an increasing impact on the field.  The conference series includes workshops and seminars just before and/or after the conference. These associated workshops and seminars focus in detail on current status and advances in the topics of MICCAI.

Conference venue selections and local organizing Chairs are determined by the Board of Directors from proposals submitted by its members offering to host a MICCAI Conference.  The MICCAI Conferences are rotated among the North American, European, and Asian continents.  Approved conference venues and dates are normally decided four to five years in advance.  The competitive proposals to organize and host a MICCAI conference must include all necessary details regarding the scientific, logistic, financial, and operational management aspects of the conference.