Collection 

Cost-Effective Instrumentation and Simplified Design for Optical Imaging

Submission status
Open
Submission deadline

Optical imaging underpins advances across medicine, life sciences, manufacturing, and beyond. Yet, many imaging systems still depend on complex, impractical or costly implementation, creating barriers to accessibility, scalability, and broader adoption. Cost-effective instrumentation and simplified design are therefore critical to extending the reach and impact of optical imaging without compromising performance.

This collection highlights innovative approaches that reduce complexity and cost in the design, fabrication, and deployment of optical imaging technologies. We seek engineering research advances that clearly demonstrate impactful improvements in simplicity and/or affordability of optical imaging design or manufacturing, while maintaining high precision, functionality, and reliability across diverse application areas.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

  1. Simplified imaging system design: novel microscopy strategies, compact optical layouts, freeform optics for imaging, novel illumination schemes.
  2. Applications in sensing and diagnostics: point-of-care diagnostics, optofluidic imaging devices, ophthalmology imaging, environmental and industrial imaging tools, miniaturized imaging systems such as endoscopy and portable OCT.
  3. Label-free imaging and quantitative microscopy: optical imaging techniques that do not require chemical or fluorescent labels, aimed at obtaining structural and functional information from samples with greater simplicity, reduced cost, and minimal sample preparation, while maintaining high resolution and accuracy.
  4. Single molecule imaging and tracking microscopy: 3D-printed single-molecule microscope, mobile phone-based fluorescent microscopy, novel single-molecule tracking add-in module, novel low-cost 3D single-molecule tracking microscopy.
  5. Computational imaging for hardware simplification: Compressive imaging, lensless imaging, hybrid optical-digital systems that replace expensive optics with algorithms
  6. Integration with emerging technologies: imaging systems with AI-assisted calibration, miniaturized imaging for AR/VR and wearable devices, open-source hardware and software for optical imaging.
To submit, see the participating journals
Laser beam.

Editors

Shangguo Hou, PhD, Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, China

Shangguo Hou is an Assistant Professor and Junior Principal Investigator at Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, China. His research focuses on the development of advanced single-molecule dynamics imaging methods and their applications in biology. 

 

Daniele Pirone, PhD, CNR-ISASI, Italy 

Dr. Daniele Pirone is a Researcher at CNR-ISASI. His research focuses on label-free computational microscopy, with a particular focus on digital holography, quantitative phase imaging, phase contrast tomography, imaging flow cytometry, and Fourier ptychographic microscopy for biomedical and environmental applications. 

 

Communications Engineering is edited by both in-house professional editors and Editorial Board Members.

Nature Communications is edited by in-house professional editors. 

Scientific Reports is edited by both in-house professional editors and Editorial Board Members.

For this Collection, Daniele Pirone, Shangguo Hou and members of the Editorial Board will handle submissions to Communications Engineering.

Our editors work closely together to ensure the quality of our published papers and consistency in author experience.