Journal of Biomedical Optics (JBO) is a Gold Open Access journal that publishes peer-reviewed papers on innovations in optical systems and techniques that will improve health care and lead to discoveries in biomedical research. Growth in the capabilities of biomedical optical technology has fueled new areas of contrast, resolution, and spectral capacity in imaging and sensing, which have enabled widespread applications throughout biology and medicine. Topics suitable for JBO include significant in-depth studies of:

• fundamentally new discoveries in biomedical optical devices for imaging or sensing using: optical spectroscopy, near infrared spectroscopy, photoacoustics, microscopy, optical coherence, tomography, fluorescence, phosphorescence, elastography, hyperspectral, using features unique to optics such as spatial, spectral, temporal, interference, polarization, or quantum nature;
• increasing knowledge of light-tissue interaction, through theoretical transport models such as Monte Carlo, diffusion, electromagnetic and empirical methods, and through physical methods to model light–tissue interactions such as tissue-simulating phantoms;
• computational advances in optical image and signal processing, and image reconstruction, including new methods in machine learning and artificial intelligence that improve insight into the utility, detection, or performance value;
• novel medical optical systems used in definitive animal or human studies or clinical trial testing that can impact the field by their design or the optical innovation, including discoveries and technical advances in optics emerging from mobile, remote, wearable, or implantable technologies that can improve health and wellness;
• discoveries in photonics, nanophotonics, plasmonics, biosensors, and optical reporters that have direct relevance to biomedical needs or utility;
• hybrid imaging or interventional systems where optics are combined with other tools such as ultrasound, x-rays, magnetic resonance, molecular sensing, or electromagnetics.