Methods and Applications for Imaging, Simulation, and Modelling in Biology and Medicine: Artificial Intelligence, Current Research, New Trends

Dear Colleagues,

Over the past decades, a continuous increase in computational power, together with substantial advances in the digital image processing and pattern recognition fields, has motivated the development of computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) systems, augmented and virtual reality applications for surgical planning and simulation, and digital-twin applications for healthcare. Thanks to their effective, precise, and repeatable results, validated CAD systems are nowadays exploited as a valid aid during diagnostic procedures. Surgical simulation applications have become an essential part of surgical procedures as well as training, while research on the development of digital-twin applications in healthcare is continuously increasing, to deliver significant societal and health benefits.

Similar important advances in the field of microscopy image analysis have been motivated by the advent of digital microscopes producing high-resolution digital images. Due to their huge size, the long time required for the manual analysis of such images has spun the development of computerized systems aimed at, for example, marker (and nuclei) segmentation, quantification (nuclei counting), at marker co-occurrence analysis from images obtained by fluorescence, histochemical, and immunohistochemical.

Both medical, as well as biomedical processing applications are much appreciated in the field for their potential to minimize the inherent subjectivity of manual analysis and to largely reduce the workload of clinicians via high-throughput analysis. Moreover, they are devoted to the final aim of developing the so called Virtual Physiological Human, a human digital twin aimed at replicating its physical twin for allowing fast and prompt medical analysis and prediction.

This Special Issue intends to provide a comprehensive overview of recent, theoretical, computational, and/or practical advances in the medical/biomedical/microscopy image enhancement, analysis, and visualization fields. Applications and recent research interests in the biological and medical fields will be also considered and analyzed with the aim of highlighting new trends. Particularly, applications exploiting (deep) learning methods are encouraged.  

Dr. Elena Casiraghi
Dr. Barbara Barricelli
Guest Editors

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