Current Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Sarcoidosis

Abstract

Purpose: Sarcoidosis is a complex disease which can affect nearly every organ system with manifestations ranging from asymptomatic imaging findings to sudden cardiac death. As such, diagnosis and prognostication are topics of continued investigation. Recent technological advancements have introduced multiple modalities of artificial intelligence (AI) to the study of sarcoidosis. Machine learning, deep learning, and radiomics have predominantly been used to study sarcoidosis.

Methods: Articles were collected by searching online databases using keywords such as sarcoid, machine learning, artificial intelligence, radiomics, and deep learning. Article titles and abstracts were reviewed for relevance by a single reviewer. Articles written in languages other than English were excluded.

Conclusions: Machine learning may be used to help diagnose pulmonary sarcoidosis and prognosticate in cardiac sarcoidosis. Deep learning is most comprehensively studied for diagnosis of pulmonary sarcoidosis and has less frequently been applied to prognostication in cardiac sarcoidosis. Radiomics has primarily been used to differentiate sarcoidosis from malignancy. To date, the use of AI in sarcoidosis is limited by the rarity of this disease, leading to small, suboptimal training sets. Nevertheless, there are applications of AI that have been used to study other systemic diseases, which may be adapted for use in sarcoidosis. These applications include discovery of new disease phenotypes, discovery of biomarkers of disease onset and activity, and treatment optimization.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence; Deep learning; Machine learning; Radiomics; Sarcoidosis.