Surgical imaging in ophthalmology

Hi everyone First, let me express my deepest gratitude to all our special editors, authors, and reviewers in helping us bring out this issue. All of us have witnessed the evolution of imaging techniques in ophthalmology. The imaging has not only progressed by leaps and bounds but has slowly become “treatment-defining” and indispensable for our clinics. The accuracy in diagnosis, serial documentation, simpler archiving, and retrieval, along with easy transfer of knowledge between experts and from teachers to students, has brought tremendous advancement in quality to eye care that we now provide to our patients. The utility of diagnostic imaging has expanded to prognostication of different diseases; we are now aware of so many optical coherence tomography (OCT)-based biomarkers for retinal diseases like diabetic macular edema or macular neovascularization, which are of significant public health importance. Wide-field photography has allowed us to detect and localize so many treatable lesions. The next jump in imaging is to help surgeons in surgical planning and optimizing outcomes. This issue has focused on this aspect only. The guest editorial from Dr. Muni et al. brings us the most exciting use of retinal imaging for eyes with retinal detachment. In fact, the closer look at photoreceptors, corrugations, and retinal displacement is now forcing surgeons to relook at methods or the pace at which we achieve retinal reattachment. A decade back, very few of us would have resorted to performing a preoperative OCT scan for an eye with rhegmatogenous retinal detachment. Similarly, the advent of intraoperative OCT and other imaging modalities like three-dimensional viewing is driving us to the next level of visualization during ophthalmic microsurgery. Review by Dr. Reddy et al. gives us a fine perspective of “heads-up” vitreous surgery and how can this make our surgical maneuvers more precise with lesser collateral damage. Ophthalmology has always benefited and progressed from a synergistic pair of innovations. Small incision phacoemulsification with foldable lenses, OCT for capturing center involving macular edema got synergized with the availability of antivascular growth factor injections, corneal OCT and imaging advancements got boosted by lenticule procedures and Descemet’s Stripping Endothelial Keratoplasty (DSEK)/Descemet’s Stripping Automated Endothelial Keratoplasty (DSAEK), intraoperative OCT shall very soon find its use for subretinal injections, and so on… We are also very pleased to share that we have received lots of submissions in the past 2 months, and now we have a balanced combination of invited and submitted manuscripts. We encourage our young colleagues to keep submitting their cases and original studies to HJoO. We shall try our best to accommodate maximum and provide the support that is needed for first-time authors. We are looking forward to our insightful manuscripts. Hope all of you would like this issue. Please do send us your feedback and suggestions to help us improve. Warm personal regards