The existence and crucial role played by large-scale, organized motions in turbulent flows are now recognized by industrial, applied and fundamental researchers alike. It has become increasingly evident that coherent structures influence mixing, noise, vibration, heat transfer, drag, etc... The accelera tion of the development of both experimental and computational programs devoted to this topic has been evident at several recent international meet ings. One of the first questions which experimentalists or numerical analysts are faced with is: how can these structures be separated from the...