Notable Papers and New Directions in Sensors, Signals, and Imaging Informatics

Hsu, William; Baumgartner, Christian; Deserno, Thomas M.

Objective: To identify and highlight research papers representing noteworthy developments in signals, sensors, and imaging informatics in 2020. Method: A broad literature search was conducted on PubMed and Scopus databases. We combined Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms and keywords to construct particular queries for sensors, signals, and image informatics. We only considered papers that have been published in journals providing at least three articles in the query response. Section editors then independently reviewed the titles and abstracts of preselected papers assessed on a three-point Likert scale. Papers were rated from 1 (do not include) to 3 (should be included) for each topical area (sensors, signals, and imaging informatics) and those with an average score of 2 or above were subsequently read and assessed again by two of the three co-editors. Finally, the top 14 papers with the highest combined scores were considered based on consensus. Results: The search for papers was executed in January 2021. After removing duplicates and conference proceedings, the query returned a set of 101, 193, and 529 papers for sensors, signals, and imaging informatics, respectively. We filtered out journals that had less than three papers in the query results, reducing the number of papers to 41, 117, and 333, respectively. From these, the co-editors identified 22 candidate papers with more than 2 Likert points on average, from which 14 candidate best papers were nominated after intensive discussion. At least five external reviewers then rated the remaining papers. The four finalist papers were found using the composite rating of all external reviewers. These best papers were approved by consensus of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Yearbook editorial board. Conclusions. Sensors, signals, and imaging informatics is a dynamic field of intense research. The four best papers represent advanced approaches for combining, processing, modeling, and analyzing heterogeneous sensor and imaging data. The selected papers demonstrate the combination and fusion of multiple sensors and sensor networks using electrocardiogram (ECG), electroencephalogram (EEG), or photoplethysmogram (PPG) with advanced data processing, deep and machine learning techniques, and present image processing modalities beyond state-of-the-art that significantly support and further improve medical decision making.