Bio-Inspired Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

A special issue of Biomimetics (ISSN 2313-7673).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2025 | Viewed by 400

Special Issue Editors

School of Computing, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth PO1 3HE, UK
Interests: computer-aided medical analysis; robotic control and design
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Computing, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth PO1 3HE, UK
Interests: robotics; healthcare robotics; machine learning; human robot interaction
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and biomimetics presents groundbreaking opportunities to revolutionize healthcare. By drawing inspiration from biological systems, this interdisciplinary field explores innovative solutions to address complex medical challenges. In this rapidly evolving domain, research predominantly focuses on utilizing AI to emulate adaptive mechanisms observed in nature, leading to advances in diagnostics, medical devices, and personalized treatments.

Additionally, biomimetic principles, such as those inspired by fungal networks and bionic flight dynamics, are offering new perspectives in healthcare innovation. For instance, fungal-inspired architectures are informing the development of self-healing and adaptive medical implants, while flight-inspired dynamics are influencing drone-based medical logistics. These bio-inspired solutions promise not only efficiency and resilience, but also a sustainable approach to healthcare challenges.

This Special Issue aims to bring together cutting-edge research and foster collaboration across disciplines, including AI, biomimetics, healthcare, robotics, and materials science. By integrating these diverse perspectives, we anticipate uncovering new opportunities for innovation and advancing our understanding of bio-inspired AI applications in healthcare.

We invite researchers, practitioners, and innovators to contribute original research, reviews, or case studies addressing bio-inspired AI in healthcare. Submissions may explore, but are not limited to, the following topics:

  • AI-driven diagnostics inspired by natural systems;
  • Bio-inspired materials for self-healing and adaptive medical devices;
  • Fungal architecture-inspired healthcare applications;
  • Flight-inspired robotics for medical logistics and disaster response;
  • Computational modelling of bio-inspired healthcare systems;
  • Sustainability and resource optimization in bio-inspired medical technologies.

Dr. Dongxu Gao
Prof. Dr. Zhaojie Ju
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Biomimetics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • artificial intelligence in healthcare
  • biomimetics
  • bio-inspired medical devices
  • fungal architectures
  • adaptive learning systems
  • self-healing implants
  • medical prosthetics
  • healthcare innovation

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

13 pages, 3259 KiB  
Article
FRNet V2: A Lightweight Full-Resolution Convolutional Neural Network for OCTA Vessel Segmentation
by Dongxu Gao, Liang Wang, Youtong Fang, Du Jiang and Yalin Zheng
Biomimetics 2025, 10(4), 207; https://doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics10040207 - 27 Mar 2025
Viewed by 139
Abstract
Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) is an advanced non-invasive imaging technique that can generate three-dimensional images of retinal and choroidal vessels. It is of great value in the diagnosis and monitoring of a variety of ophthalmic diseases. However, most existing methods for blood [...] Read more.
Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) is an advanced non-invasive imaging technique that can generate three-dimensional images of retinal and choroidal vessels. It is of great value in the diagnosis and monitoring of a variety of ophthalmic diseases. However, most existing methods for blood vessel segmentation in OCTA images rely on an encoder–decoder architecture. This architecture typically involves a large number of parameters and leads to slower inference speeds. To address these challenges and improve segmentation efficiency, this paper proposes a lightweight full-resolution convolutional neural network named FRNet V2 for blood vessel segmentation in OCTA images. FRNet V2 combines the ConvNeXt V2 architecture with deep separable convolution and introduces a recursive mechanism. This mechanism enhances feature representation while reducing the amount of model parameters and computational complexity. In addition, we design a lightweight hybrid adaptive attention mechanism (DWAM) that further improves the segmentation accuracy of the model through the combination of channel self-attention blocks and spatial self-attention blocks. The experimental results show that on two well-known retinal image datasets (OCTA-500 and ROSSA), FRNet V2 can achieve Dice coefficients and accuracy comparable to other methods while reducing the number of parameters by more than 90%. In conclusion, FRNet V2 provides an efficient and lightweight solution for fast and accurate OCTA image blood vessel segmentation in resource-constrained environments, offering strong support for clinical applications. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bio-Inspired Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop