The application of artificial intelligence in lung cancer: a narrative review

OBJECTIVE: This review was conducted to systematically summarize the progress made by artificial intelligence technology in early screening based medical imaging, pathological diagnosis, genomics inspection, prognostic evaluation, and individual treatment of lung cancer. BACKGROUND: Lung cancer has a high mortality rate in China, which is closely related to the fact that most lung cancer patients are not diagnosed until the malignancy is advanced. Challenges remain in the early detection, accurate diagnosis, monitoring and individual treatment of lung cancers. Artificial intelligence has developed to process large amounts of data, from clinical presentations to physiological images, which is essential for solving the complex issues with clinical medicine. Increasing evidence has suggested that artificial intelligence technology provides novel, promising strategies for the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer. METHODS: A review of literature was conducted in PubMed, EMBASE and Cochrane to identify the latest research on artificial intelligence and lung cancer, and ultimately to generate a narrative review. CONCLUSIONS: Artificial intelligence plays an important role in the imaging inspection, histopathology examination and genomics inspection of lung cancer. In addition, artificial intelligence has the ability to detect a small number of biomarkers, which is conducive to lung cancer monitoring. Moreover, the intelligent treatment of lung cancer has gradually become the trend of future development, whether in internal medicine or surgical treatment. It is believed that artificial intelligence could improve the early diagnosis of lung cancer and assist doctors in treating lung cancer patients individually.