Since 1994, the Optical Society of America has organized biennial topical meetings in the field of biomedical optics. These BIOMED conferences address the forefront of research and development in areas of the application of light in biomedical sciences ranging from molecular level progress in our understanding of biological processes, to new and improved advances in instrumentation, to state-of-the-art techniques to diagnose and treat diseases. This year’s BIOMED meeting [1] was held in Fort Lauderdale, FL, 24–28 April 2016 and followed for the first time the OSA congress style and comprised four topical meetings: (1) Cancer Imaging and Therapy, co-chaired by Dr. David Sampson (Australia) and Dr. Stefan Andersson-Engels (Sweden); (2) Clinical and Translational Biophotonics, chaired by Dr. Stephen Boppart (USA) and Dr. Thomas Wang (USA), (3) Optics and the Brain, chaired by Dr. Elizabeth Hillman (USA) and Dr. Francesco Pavone (Italy), and (4) Optical Tomography and Spectroscopy, chaired by Dr. Christoph Hitzenberger (Austria), Dr. Hamid Deghani (United Kingdom) and Dr. Daniel Razansky (Germany). In addition to the excellent plenary and invited speaker-led sessions and poster sessions, the meeting was noteworthy for its session entitled Industry Panel–An Introduction to the Regulatory Process, the Bright Ideas Pitch Panel Luncheon, the Town Hall Forum on Biophotonics Commercialization and the special plenary session on the 25 Year Anniversary of Optical Coherence Tomography, the subject of its own forthcoming special issue of Biomedical Optics Express.

The 28 papers published in this feature issue of Biomedical Optics Express cover a representative cross section of research presented at this year’s BIOMED meeting. The editors of this feature issue and organizers of the conference would like to take the opportunity to thank the authors and the reviewers for their contributions to this feature issue, as well as the presenters and attendees of the conference for their scientific presentations and active engagement in discussions which were so essential for the overall success of BIOMED 2016.

Finally, the organizers are pleased to announce that the next conference in this series, Congress of Biomedical Optics (BIOMED) 2018, will be held at the Diplomat in Hollywood, FL on April 2-6, 2018.