Topic: Surgical Optomics: The Synergy of Advanced Imaging and Artificial Intelligence Towards Precision Surgery

Since the inception of surgical practice, precision in the operating room has been fundamentally constrained by the limits of human vision. The recent concurrent maturation of advanced optical imaging modalities and high-performance computing has created a unique opportunity to fundamentally augment surgical vision, revealing previously invisible, transparent, and deeply hidden anatomical and physiological information. These novel approaches, which combine optical imaging methods with advanced computational techniques to provide relevant, real-time, quantitative, and functional information during surgical procedures, are collectively grouped under the umbrella of Surgical Optomics. By definition, an 'omics' science involves the comprehensive characterization and quantification of a biological system. In the context of surgery, this means moving beyond simply viewing tissue anatomy, and instead capturing a massive, multidimensional dataset of the patient's physiological state as the operation unfolds.

It is within this context that we present this Special Issue on Surgical Optomics. Our objective is to highlight the pioneering research that is translating these complex, multidimensional models from theory into experimental and subsequently intraoperative reality.

Optical imaging, image-guided surgery, computational imaging, artificial intelligence, multimodal imaging, quantitative imaging, computer vision, precision surgery, intraoperative decision support