Multimodal AI and Digital Innovations for Next-Generation Ophthalmic Care

Dear Colleagues,

Ophthalmic care is rapidly evolving through advances in artificial intelligence (AI), biomedical engineering, and digital health. This Special Issue, Multimodal AI and Digital Innovations for Next-Generation Ophthalmic Care, welcomes research that integrates heterogeneous data modalities—such as ophthalmic imaging (fundus photography, OCT/OCTA, ultrasound, CT/MRI), functional testing (visual fields, electrophysiology), intraoperative measurements, and clinical metadata—to improve diagnosis, prognostication, and treatment planning. We encourage submissions on computational methods (e.g., deep learning, multimodal fusion, foundation models), as well as engineering innovations that enable objective and reproducible clinical quantification.

In addition to disease detection and screening, we particularly welcome studies focused on procedure-related digital biomarkers and surgical decision support, including quantitative assessment of outcomes in strabismus and oculoplastic surgery. Relevant topics include intraoperative sensing and analytics, objective monitoring of surgical biomechanics, and computer vision-based evaluation of periocular morphology and esthetic/functional outcomes. We also invite work addressing external validation, real-world deployment, interpretability, uncertainty estimation, fairness, and data governance to facilitate safe clinical translation.

Dr. Hyun Jin Shin
Guest Editor

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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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.