Innovative Optical Sensor Systems special issue introduction

Optical platforms can be combined with several kinds of specific receptors in order to obtain selective optical sensors for substances of interest in a wide range of application fields. For instance, multimode optical fibers can carry out several bio/chemical sensor configurations, exploiting their easy manipulation, high numerical aperture, large diameter, and high number of modes. Therefore, the different efficiencies of the receptor layers and the several optical sensitivities of the innovative platforms can be combined to achieve the appropriate detection range for the substances of interest, in terms of ultra-wide and/or ultra-low detection ranges. The performance of these bio/chemical sensing approaches has now been greatly improved by integrating artificial intelligence (AI) strategies into the analysis algorithms. It enables achieving the required performance across many application fields, such as medical diagnostics, environmental monitoring, industry, food safety, and security. In this context, optical innovation offers powerful opportunities to develop new devices for strategic and high-impact fields.