Artificial intelligence and early esophageal cancer

The development of esophageal cancer(EC)from early to advanced stage results in a high mortality rate and poor prognosis.Advanced EC not only poses a serious threat to the life and health of patients but also places a heavy economic burden on their families and society.Endoscopy is of great value for the diagnosis of EC,especially in the screening of Barrett’s esophagus and early EC.However,at present,endoscopy has a low diagnostic rate for early tumors.In recent years,artificial intelligence(AI)has made remarkable progress in the diagnosis of digestive system tumors,providing a new model for clinicians to diagnose and treat these tumors.In this review,we aim to provide a comprehensive overview of how AI can help doctors diagnose early EC and precancerous lesions and make clinical decisions based on the predicted results.We analyze and summarize the recent research on AI and early EC.We find that based on deep learning(DL)and convolutional neural network methods,the current computer-aided diagnosis system has gradually developed from in vitro image analysis to real-time detection and diagnosis.Based on powerful computing and DL capabilities,the diagnostic accuracy of AI is close to or better than that of endoscopy specialists.We also analyze the shortcomings in the current AI research and corresponding improvement strategies.We believe that the application of AI-assisted endoscopy in the diagnosis of early EC and precancerous lesions will become possible after the further advancement of AI-related research.