Artificial intelligence strengthens cervical cancer screening - present and future.

Journal: Cancer biology & medicine
Published Date:

Abstract

Cervical cancer is a severe threat to women's health. The majority of cervical cancer cases occur in developing countries. The WHO has proposed screening 70% of women with high-performance tests between 35 and 45 years of age by 2030 to accelerate the elimination of cervical cancer. Due to an inadequate health infrastructure and organized screening strategy, most low- and middle-income countries are still far from achieving this goal. As part of the efforts to increase performance of cervical cancer screening, it is necessary to investigate the most accurate, efficient, and effective methods and strategies. Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly expanding its application in cancer screening and diagnosis and deep learning algorithms have offered human-like interpretation capabilities on various medical images. AI will soon have a more significant role in improving the implementation of cervical cancer screening, management, and follow-up. This review aims to report the state of AI with respect to cervical cancer screening. We discuss the primary AI applications and development of AI technology for image recognition applied to detection of abnormal cytology and cervical neoplastic diseases, as well as the challenges that we anticipate in the future.

Authors

  • Tong Wu
    National Clinical Research Center for Obstetrical and Gynecological Diseases Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology Wuhan China.
  • Eric Lucas
    Early Detection, Prevention & Infections Branch International Agency for Research on Cancer (WHO), 25 avenue Tony Garnier, Lyon 69007, France.
  • Fanghui Zhao
    Department of Cancer Epidemiology, National Cancer Center/National Clinical Research Center for Cancer/Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, 100021, China. zhaofangh@cicams.ac.cn.
  • Partha Basu
    Early Detection, Prevention & Infections Branch International Agency for Research on Cancer (WHO), 25 avenue Tony Garnier, Lyon 69007, France.
  • Youlin Qiao
    National Cancer Center/National Clinical Research Center for Cancer, Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China. qiaoy@cicams.ac.cn.