Background and objectives: Pancreatic cancer (PC) is one of the deadliest cancers worldwide although substantial advancement has been made in its comprehensive treatment. The development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology has allowed its clinical applications to expand remarkably in recent years. Diverse methods and algorithms are employed by AI to extrapolate new data from clinical records to aid in the treatment of PC. In this review, we will summarize AI's use in several aspects of PC diagnosis and therapy, as well as its limits and potential future research avenues.
Methods: We examine the most recent research on the use of AI in PC. The articles are categorized and examined according to the medical task of their algorithm. Two search engines, PubMed and Google Scholar, were used to screen the articles.
Results: Overall, 66 papers published in 2001 and after were selected. Of the four medical tasks (risk assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis prediction), diagnosis was the most frequently researched, and retrospective single-center studies were the most prevalent. We found that the different medical tasks and algorithms included in the reviewed studies caused the performance of their models to vary greatly. Deep learning algorithms, on the other hand, produced excellent results in all of the subdivisions studied.
Conclusions: AI is a promising tool for helping PC patients and may contribute to improved patient outcomes. The integration of humans and AI in clinical medicine is still in its infancy and requires the in-depth cooperation of multidisciplinary personnel.
Keywords: artificial intelligence (AI); artificial neural network (ANN); future perspectives; machine learning (ML); pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PC).
Copyright © 2022 Chen, Fu, Shao, Chen, Ye, Li, He and Zhu.