Artificial Intelligence in Computer Vision: Advances and Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is fundamentally changing the landscape of computer vision (CV), influencing the ways machines interpret and work with images and videos. In the last ten years, advances in deep learning, access to larger datasets, and better hardware have led to remarkable progress in this field. CV technology now matches or even exceeds human ability in some complex tasks, with practical uses for these systems ranging from self-driving cars and medical image analysis to automated quality checks in factories and human action recognition, making AI-driven vision a crucial aspect of modern technology.

From a technological perspective, promising algorithms have been implemented in recent years, such as Vision Transformers, diffusion-based generative models, self-supervised representation learning, multimodal architectures, and efficient on-device inference, considerably advancing the state of the art in this field. These innovations are not only improving AI’s accuracy and robustness, but are also revealing new research directions related to interpretability, energy efficiency, and trustworthy AI.

In terms of AI applications, significant advances have been made in several fields; for example, in healthcare, AI has been used for automated medical imaging analysis; in environmental monitoring, it has been employed in biodiversity tracking, climate modeling, and sustainable resource management; in manufacturing, it has been applied for the automatic observation and interpretation of production lines, which allow high-precision anomaly detection and reduce operational costs; and in smart cities, it has been employed for improving mobility, safety, and accessibility through advanced video surveillance. In addition, a growing number of fields are being influenced by AI-driven computer vision, underscoring the essential role of this technology in shaping the future.

This Special Issue, "Artificial Intelligence in Computer Vision: Advances and Applications," aims to provide a comprehensive and forward-looking exploration of current developments in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Its objectives are to highlight cutting-edge technological and scientific advances and to showcase impactful applications of AI-powered vision systems to address social, industrial, and scientific challenges.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Vision Transformers and hybrid deep learning architectures;
• Self-supervised, semi-supervised, and multimodal visual learning;
• Generative models (such as GANs or diffusion models) for image synthesis, augmentation, and restoration;
• Efficient and low-power computer vision (compression, pruning, quantization);
• Trustworthy and interpretable AI for visual systems;
• Medical and biomedical imaging applications of AI;
• Autonomous driving, robotics, and drone perception;
• Environmental monitoring and precision agriculture;
• Industrial inspection and smart manufacturing;
• Smart cities, mobility analytics, and public safety;
• AI-enhanced entertainment;
• Ethical aspects of AI in CV.

This Special Issue also intends to foster interdisciplinary dialog and collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, driving broader yet thoughtful adoption and evolution of these technologies.

Dr. Andrea Zingoni
Dr. Gianluca Bonifazi
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 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. Electronics 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.

• artificial intelligence
• computer vision
• application