Clinical Translation of Novel Photonics Technologies: From Fundamental Research to Clinical Practice

Dear Colleagues,

For this Special Issue, we welcome contributions of original articles and reviews from researchers working on biophotonics approaches for biomedical applications. Recent advances in (bio)photonics technologies have widely increased the clinical translation of molecular diagnostics and light treatments, improving patient prognoses and overall survival rates.

In applied research and clinical practice, these advances combine ultraviolet light, both visible and infrared through to the terahertz region, in order to enable disease detection through screening, identification, and localization; such technologies can guide surgeries, enable the planning and monitoring of treatments, and assist in the prediction of treatment outcomes.

In basic biology research, biophotonics has been used to study the physical and chemical properties of biofluids, cells, 3D cell cultures/engineered tissues, and ex vivo and in vivo tissues; such approaches assist our understanding of the biological/biochemical processes which cause diseases, promote photobiomodulation, control the mechanisms of cell death, and mediate immunologic and metabolic responses.

In basic physics and chemistry research, biophotonics encompasses research of material properties and their interactions with biological systems, including the properties of nano- and microparticles and pharmaceutical formulations (emulsions, gels, lotions, moisturizers, and others) for diagnostics, treatments, and theranostics. This research extends to the properties of the contrast agents which are often used in multiple surgical procedures or in enhancing the microscopic/nanoscopic visualization of cellular and subcellular processes.

In basic physics, engineering, and computational research, biophotonics includes simulations of light propagation in complex media, such as tissues, as well as simulations of device interactions with biological systems for instrument design and to determine the feasibility of next-generation miniaturized sensors; these can be used in wearables and smartphone detectors for biological applications.

Biophotonics has overlaps with many other fields. For example, in mathematics, biophotonics has applications in statistics for artificial intelligence, machine learning, and multivariate analysis, enabling the automation of analysis and allowing real-time sampling and/or biomarker identification, patient stratification, and high-throughput screening.

This Special Issue welcomes original articles and reviews addressing the aforementioned biophotonics research domains. This Special Issue plans to assist in enabling clinical translation and to present breakthroughs in fundamental research. We also welcome feasibility studies with small numbers of patients, on the condition that the results support the conclusions drawn by the authors and the study limitations are acknowledged. Finally, we require that submissions are focused on biomedical applications.

Dr. Marcelo Saito Nogueira
Prof. Dr. Luis Felipe C. S. Carvalho
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. Photonics 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 2400 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.