Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
The ability to observe and manipulate tissue structure and function within the human body in minimally invasive ways improves clinical diagnosis and treatment of a wide variety of pathological conditions. In this joint collection between Communications Engineering, Communications Medicine and Scientific Reports, we bring together engineering research that improves endoscopic technologies and instruments, with clinical research describing the latest progress using endoscopy to improve patient outcomes.
Better tools can lead to improved diagnostic capability, less invasive approaches, and greater functionality, such as combinatorial imaging and precision treatments. From an engineering perspective, relevant topics include: endoscope design considering different imaging modalities, multimodal and multifunctional platforms, robotic and wireless approaches, data driven methods such as machine learning, and the incorporation of materials and approaches to prevent tissue injury (such as hydrogels). We also encourage submissions covering clinical applications that represent significant advances in diagnosis or treatment, including comparisons of different approaches, new applications and improvements to existing approaches. In bringing the technological and clinical communities together, we hope to create interdisciplinary interest, discussion and maybe even initiate new collaborations to advance this important biomedical imaging platform.