It was organized -under the auspices of an international Standing Committee chaired by Professor Miya, University of Tokyo, since its creation- by the Laboratoire des Signaux et Systemes - LSS (CNRS-SUPELEC-UPS) & Laboratoire de Genie Electrique de Paris - LGEP (CNRS-SUPELEC-UPS-UPMC) and by Electricite de France - Research and Development Division (EDF-DER), in cooperation with the Japan Society of Applied Electromagnetics and Mechanics (JSAEM), and with a great variety of French and international sponsorships: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Departement Sciences pour l'Inginieur; Confederation Francaise pour les Essais Non-Destructifs (COFREND); International Compumag Society; Ministere de l'Education Nationale, de la Recherche et de la Technologie; Ecole Superieure d'ectricite (SUPELEC); Universite Paris-Sud (Departement de Physique & Direction de la Recherche).

Held in the excellent facilities of EDF-DER that are beautifully set in the island of Chatou, "Ille des Impressionistes", located in the midst of the Seine river, 10km West of Paris, the Workshop was blessed by a sunny and warm September weather. Notice that a web site (with many useful electronic links) "http://supelec.supelec.fr/invi/ende98" was set up in February 1998 and quite actively maintained since then so as to allow the smooth and fast sharing of information during the preparation of the Workshop and afterwards, with a minimum of paperwork also.

Topics of interest included 5 key items, "Improved and novel methods of electromagnetic nondestructive testing", "Solution of direct and inverse problems", "Advanced sensing technology design and optimization", "Proposal and results of benchmark problems", and "Industrial applications".

65 participants were officially registered, from Europe, the United States and Japan, and 32 multi-authored (and most often multi-institution) papers were presented. Short versions of these contributions have been published in the Workshop Digest which was provided to every registered participant and the reviewed and accordingly revised full papers are found herein, in addition to a summary of the keynote address.

After brief welcoming remarks by the two co-chairs,-D. Lesselier and A. Razek, and by P. Meurgey in charge of the organization at EDF-DER, a 40' keynote address on "Non Destructive Evaluation at Electricite de France" was given in introduction by J. Samman from EDF. Then the contributions of 20' each were given in smooth succession, a comfortable pause schedule enabling a number of discussions "off-line".

6 sessions had been organized overall: "Probe design and related issues" (6 papers) chaired by D. Placko, "Defect evaluation with emphasis on stochastic methods (6 papers) chaired by S. S. Udpa, "Innovative modalities and applications" (3 papers) chaired by J. Pavo, on the first day; "Direct modeling with emphasis on numerical techniques" (8 papers) chaired half by G. Rubinacci and half by D. Loan, "Defect evaluation with emphasis on deterministic methods" (7 papers) chaired by J. Bowler, and "Benchmark problems" (2 papers, and a round-robin examination) chaired and convened by T. Takagi, on the second day. Closing remarks were then made by K. Miya, and by S. S. Udpa, in charge of the forthcoming E'NDE'99.

This Workshop intended to allow a fruitful and well-focused discussion on a topic, Electromagnetic Non-Destructive Evaluation, which is crucial to a score of engineering activities and environmental evaluation and protection issues, and which needs all together deep theoretical insight, efficient modeling and data interpretation tools, and well-designed measurement systems and probes. It is the belief of the Workshop organizers that E'NDE'98 indeed allowed a better understanding of such intricate problems and fair advances in some of them, through confrontation of ideas and techniques, in an excellent cooperative spirit as highlighted by the great number of comprehensive investigations presently led in multinational, multidisciplinary frameworks. It is also their belief that these edited proceedings, "Electromagnetic Non-Destructive Evaluation (III)", published by IOS Press in the series "Studies in Applied Electromagnetics and Mechanics", will give a faithful image of these many endeavors, and should be of great interest to both theoreticians and practitioners in the field.

To conclude, the editors acknowledge the contribution of all members of the Organizing and Administrative Committees, and of the referees, without whom E'NDE'98 and the volume issued from it would not have been as such. Special thanks should go to C. Marchand and L. Pichon, who handled the registration of the participants and the submission of the abstracts and full papers, and to our co-organizer at EDF, P. Meurgey.

D. Lesselier and A. Razek
Co-Editors