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Artificial intelligence in Cancer imaging and diagnosis

Diagnostic laboratories are in the midst of a transformation and are somewhat at cross-roads. In the face of decreasing revenues and increasing workloads, there is a rise in demand to increase throughput and efficiency while maintaining or improving quality, particularly in clinical diagnostics.  In addition, today’s complex mix of therapies offered to a varied demographic and the shift toward precision medicine implies that oncologists and pathologists must work in concert to target the right patient for the right therapy at the right time. 

New tools and technologies such as computational and digital pathology, molecular diagnostics and artificial intelligence (AI) are making their way into advanced clinical diagnostics, providing some unique opportunities to incorporate these tools into the evolving health care landscape.  Herein we present a cross journal series with articles that would give the viewer a perspective of the current trends and future prospects of AI primarily in clinical diagnostics.   

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published. The Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which are handled through the peer-review process. The peer-review of any submissions for which the Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.

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  1. Brain metastases are common complications in patients with cancer and significantly affect prognosis and treatment strategies. The accurate segmentation of brain metastases is crucial for effective radiation t...

    Authors: Yiren Wang, Zhongjian Wen, Shuilan Bao, Delong Huang, Youhua Wang, Bo Yang, Yunfei Li, Ping Zhou, Huaiwen Zhang and Haowen Pang
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2025 20:50
  2. In lower-grade gliomas (LrGGs, histological grades 2–3), there exist a minority of high-risk molecular subtypes with malignant transformation potential, associated with unfavorable clinical outcomes and shorte...

    Authors: Xiangli Yang, Wenju Niu, Kai Wu, Guoqiang Yang and Hui Zhang
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2025 25:43
  3. Accurate identification and evaluation of lymph nodes (LNs) in prostate cancer (PCa) patients is crucial for effective staging but can be time-consuming. We utilized a 3D V-Net model to improve the efficiency ...

    Authors: Zhaonan Sun, Pengsheng Wu, Tongtong Zhao, Ge Gao, Huihui Wang, Xiaodong Zhang and Xiaoying Wang
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2025 25:37
  4. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is often diagnosed using gadoxetate disodium-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (EOB-MRI). Standardized reporting according to the Liver Imaging Reporting and Data System (LI-RA...

    Authors: Róbert Stollmayer, Selda Güven, Christian Marcel Heidt, Kai Schlamp, Pál Novák Kaposi, Oyunbileg von Stackelberg, Hans-Ulrich Kauczor, Miriam Klauss and Philipp Mayer
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2025 25:36
  5. This study aims to introduce the concept of habitat subregions and construct an accurate prediction model by analyzing refined medical images, to predict lymph node metastasis (LNM) in patients with intrahepat...

    Authors: Pengyu Chen, Zhenwei Yang, Peigang Ning, Hao Yuan, Zuochao Qi, Qingshan Li, Bo Meng, Xianzhou Zhang and Haibo Yu
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2025 25:19
  6. Thyroid cancer is the most common form of endocrine malignancy and fine needle aspiration (FNA) cytology is a reliable method for clinical diagnosis. Identification of genetic mutation status has been proved e...

    Authors: Siping Xiong, Shuguang Liu, Wei Zhang, Chao Zeng, Degui Liao, Tian Tang, Shimin Wang and Yimin Guo
    Citation: Diagnostic Pathology 2025 20:22
  7. Accurately predicting the malignant risk of ground-glass nodules (GGOs) is crucial for precise treatment planning. This study aims to utilize convolutional neural networks based on dual-time-point 18F-FDG PET/CT ...

    Authors: Yuhang Liu, Jian Wang, Bulin Du, Yaming Li and Xuena Li
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2025 25:17
  8. Radiomic analysis of quantitative features extracted from segmented medical images can be used for predictive modeling of prognosis in brain tumor patients. Manual segmentation of the tumor components is time-...

    Authors: Qi Wan, Clifford Lindsay, Chenxi Zhang, Jisoo Kim, Xin Chen, Jing Li, Raymond Y. Huang, David A. Reardon, Geoffrey S. Young and Lei Qin
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2025 25:5
  9. Timely identification of local failure after stereotactic radiotherapy for brain metastases allows for treatment modifications, potentially improving outcomes. While previous studies showed that adding radiomi...

    Authors: Hemalatha Kanakarajan, Wouter De Baene, Patrick Hanssens and Margriet Sitskoorn
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2024 19:182
  10. Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) are the most common mesenchymal tumors of the gastrointestinal tract. Recent advent of tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) has significantly improved the prognosis of GIST...

    Authors: Zhenhui Xie, Qingwei Zhang, Ranying Zhang, Yuxuan Zhao, Wang Zhang, Yang Song, Dexin Yu, Jiang Lin, Xiaobo Li, Shiteng Suo and Yan Zhou
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2024 24:169
  11. To develop a multimodal predictive model, Radiomics Integrated TLSs System (RAITS), based on preoperative CT radiomic features for the identification of TLSs in stage I lung adenocarcinoma patients and to eval...

    Authors: Xiaojiang Zhao, Yuhang Wang, Mengli Xue, Yun Ding, Han Zhang, Kai Wang, Jie Ren, Xin Li, Meilin Xu, Jun Lv, Zixiao Wang and Daqiang Sun
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2024 24:167
  12. To verify overall survival predictions made with residual convolutional neural network-determined morphological response (ResNet-MR) in patients with unresectable synchronous liver-only metastatic colorectal c...

    Authors: Sung-Hua Chiu, Hsiao-Chi Li, Wei-Chou Chang, Chao-Cheng Wu, Hsuan-Hwai Lin, Cheng-Hsiang Lo and Ping-Ying Chang
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2024 24:165
  13. Cancer diagnostic probe (CDP) as a newly entered tool in real-time breast cavity margin evaluation showed great improvement in smart margin shaving intra-operatively. This system increased the rate of involved...

    Authors: Fereshteh Abbasvandi, Zohreh Sadat Miripour, Mahdis Bayat, Seyed Mohamad Sadegh Mousavi-Kiasary, Samira Shayanfar, Fatemeh Shojaeian, Faeze Aghaei, Fahimeh Jahanbakhshi, Niloofar Abbasvandi, Maryam Omranihashemi, Atieh Akbari, Morteza Yousefi, Mohammad Hadizadeh, Naiemeh Shahrabi Farahani, Parisa Hosseinpoor, Mohammad Parniani…
    Citation: Diagnostic Pathology 2024 19:148
  14. The aim of this study was to establish an ensemble learning model based on clinicopathological parameter and ultrasound radomics for assessing the risk of lateral cervical lymph node with short diameter less t...

    Authors: Yan Wang, Shuangqingyue Zhang, Minghui Zhang, Gaosen Zhang, Zhiguang Chen, Xuemei Wang, Ziyi Yang, Zijun Yu, He Ma, Zhihong Wang and Liang Sang
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2024 24:155
  15. To evaluate the impact of prophylactic cranial irradiation (PCI) on the prognosis of patients with limited-stage small cell lung cancer (SCLC) in the era of MRI surveillance.

    Authors: Mengyuan Chen, Zehua Sun, Jingcong Pan, Yujin Xu, Yuezhen Wang, Ming Chen and Xiao Hu
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2024 19:162
  16. Recent research has demonstrated that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in radiotherapy (RT) has significantly streamlined the process for physicians to treat patients with tumors; however, bibliometric ...

    Authors: Minghe Lv, Yue feng, Su Zeng, Yang Zhang, Wenhao Shen, Wenhui Guan, Xiangyu E., Hongwei Zeng, Ruping Zhao and Jingping Yu
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2024 19:157
  17. This study aims to develop and validate a predictive model that integrates clinical features, MRI radiomics, and nutritional-inflammatory biomarkers to forecast progression-free survival (PFS) in cervical canc...

    Authors: Qi Yan, Menghan- Wu, Jing Zhang, Jiayang- Yang, Guannan- Lv, Baojun- Qu, Yanping- Zhang, Xia Yan and Jianbo- Song
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2024 24:144
  18. Lung cancer (LC) is a leading cause of cancer-related mortality, and immunotherapy (IO) has shown promise in treating advanced-stage LC. However, identifying patients likely to benefit from IO and monitoring t...

    Authors: Chien-Yi Liao, Yuh-Min Chen, Yu-Te Wu, Heng-Sheng Chao, Hwa-Yen Chiu, Ting-Wei Wang, Jyun-Ru Chen, Tsu-Hui Shiao and Chia-Feng Lu
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2024 24:129
  19. Colorectal cancer (CRC) constitutes around 10% of global cancer diagnoses and death due to cancer. Treatment involves the surgical resection of the tumor and regional lymph nodes. Assessment of multiple lymph ...

    Authors: Talat Zehra, Sarosh Moeen, Mahin Shams, Muhammad Raza, Amna Khurshid, Asad Jafri and Jamshid Abdul-Ghafar
    Citation: Diagnostic Pathology 2024 19:125
  20. We aimed to develop and externally validate a CT-based deep learning radiomics model for predicting overall survival (OS) in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) patients, and investigate the association of...

    Authors: Ji Wu, Jian Li, Bo Huang, Sunbin Dong, Luyang Wu, Xiping Shen and Zhigang Zheng
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2024 24:124
  21. To explore the effects of tube voltage, radiation dose and adaptive statistical iterative reconstruction (ASiR-V) strength level on the detection and characterization of pulmonary nodules by an artificial inte...

    Authors: Yue Yao, Xuan Su, Lei Deng, JingBin Zhang, Zengmiao Xu, Jianying Li and Xiaohui Li
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2024 24:123
  22. To evaluate and compare the diagnostic power of [18F]FLT-PET with ceMRI in patients with brain tumours or other focal lesions.

    Authors: Tomáš Rohan, Petr Hložanka, Marek Dostál, Tereza Kopřivová, Tomáš Macek, Václav Vybíhal, Hiroko Jeannette Martin, Andrea Šprláková-Puková and Miloš Keřkovský
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2024 24:110
  23. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have emerged as transformative tools in the field of radiation oncology, significantly advancing the precision of contouring practices. However, the adaptability of these a...

    Authors: Julius C. Holzschuh, Michael Mix, Martin T. Freitag, Tobias Hölscher, Anja Braune, Jörg Kotzerke, Alexis Vrachimis, Paul Doolan, Harun Ilhan, Ioana M. Marinescu, Simon K. B. Spohn, Tobias Fechter, Dejan Kuhn, Christian Gratzke, Radu Grosu, Anca-Ligia Grosu…
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2024 19:106
  24. To develop and validate a radiomics nomogram combining radiomics features and clinical factors for preoperative evaluation of Ki-67 expression status and prognostic prediction in clear cell renal cell carcinom...

    Authors: Ben Li, Jie Zhu, Yanmei Wang, Yuchao Xu, Zhaisong Gao, Hailei Shi, Pei Nie, Ju Zhang, Yuan Zhuang, Zhenguang Wang and Guangjie Yang
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2024 24:103
  25. The purpose of this study was to improve the deep learning (DL) model performance in predicting and classifying IMRT gamma passing rate (GPR) by using input features related to machine parameters and a class b...

    Authors: Wei Song, Wen Shang, Chunying Li, Xinyu Bian, Hong Lu, Jun Ma and Dahai Yu
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2024 19:98
  26. Survival prognosis of patients with gastric cancer (GC) often influences physicians’ choice of their follow-up treatment. This study aimed to develop a positron emission tomography (PET)-based radiomics model ...

    Authors: Huaiqing Zhi, Yilan Xiang, Chenbin Chen, Weiteng Zhang, Jie Lin, Zekan Gao, Qingzheng Shen, Jiancan Shao, Xinxin Yang, Yunjun Yang, Xiaodong Chen, Jingwei Zheng, Mingdong Lu, Bujian Pan, Qiantong Dong, Xian Shen…
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2024 24:99
  27. In this work, we compare input level, feature level and decision level data fusion techniques for automatic detection of clinically significant prostate lesions (csPCa).

    Authors: Deepa Darshini Gunashekar, Lars Bielak, Benedict Oerther, Matthias Benndorf, Andrea Nedelcu, Samantha Hickey, Constantinos Zamboglou, Anca-Ligia Grosu and Michael Bock
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2024 19:96
  28. Complete response prediction in locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) patients is generally focused on the radiomics analysis of staging MRI. Until now, omics information extracted from gut microbiota and circ...

    Authors: Luca Boldrini, Giuditta Chiloiro, Silvia Di Franco, Angela Romano, Lana Smiljanic, Elena Huong Tran, Francesco Bono, Diepriye Charles Davies, Loris Lopetuso, Maria De Bonis, Angelo Minucci, Luciano Giacò, Davide Cusumano, Lorenzo Placidi, Diana Giannarelli, Evis Sala…
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2024 19:94
  29. To investigate the feasibility of synthesizing computed tomography (CT) images from magnetic resonance (MR) images in multi-center datasets using generative adversarial networks (GANs) for rectal cancer MR-onl...

    Authors: Xianan Li, Lecheng Jia, Fengyu Lin, Fan Chai, Tao Liu, Wei Zhang, Ziquan Wei, Weiqi Xiong, Hua Li, Min Zhang and Yi Wang
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2024 19:89
  30. Over the past decade, several strategies have revolutionized the clinical management of patients with cutaneous melanoma (CM), including immunotherapy and targeted tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI)-based therapi...

    Authors: Karim Amrane, Coline Le Meur, Philippe Thuillier, Christian Berthou, Arnaud Uguen, Désirée Deandreis, David Bourhis, Vincent Bourbonne and Ronan Abgral
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2024 24:87
  31. Various deep learning auto-segmentation (DLAS) models have been proposed, some of which have been commercialized. However, the issue of performance degradation is notable when pretrained models are deployed in...

    Authors: Jianhao Geng, Xin Sui, Rongxu Du, Jialin Feng, Ruoxi Wang, Meijiao Wang, Kaining Yao, Qi Chen, Lu Bai, Shaobin Wang, Yongheng Li, Hao Wu, Xiangmin Hu and Yi Du
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2024 19:87
  32. At present, it has been found that many patients have acquired resistance to radiotherapy, which greatly reduces the effect of radiotherapy and further affects the prognosis. CircRNAs is involved in the regula...

    Authors: Chen Lin, Xianfeng Huang, Yuchen Qian, Jiayi Li, Youdi He and Huafang Su
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2024 19:84
  33. Treatment efficacy may differ among patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) at similar tumor–node–metastasis stages. Moreover, end-of-treatment tumor regression is a reliable indicator of treatment sensit...

    Authors: Zhiru Li, Chao Li, Liyan Li, Dong Yang, Shuangyue Wang, Junmei Song, Muliang Jiang and Min Kang
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2024 19:81
  34. This study aims to develop an ensemble machine learning-based (EML-based) risk prediction model for radiation dermatitis (RD) in patients with head and neck cancer undergoing proton radiotherapy, with the goal...

    Authors: Tsair-Fwu Lee, Yen-Hsien Liu, Chu-Ho Chang, Chien-Liang Chiu, Chih-Hsueh Lin, Jen-Chung Shao, Yu-Cheng Yen, Guang-Zhi Lin, Jack Yang, Chin-Dar Tseng, Fu-Min Fang, Pei-Ju Chao and Shen-Hao Lee
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2024 19:78
  35. Accurate segmentation of the clinical target volume (CTV) of CBCT images can observe the changes of CTV during patients' radiotherapy, and lay a foundation for the subsequent implementation of adaptive radioth...

    Authors: Ziyi Wang, Nannan Cao, Jiawei Sun, Heng Zhang, Sai Zhang, Jiangyi Ding, Kai Xie, Liugang Gao and Xinye Ni
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2024 19:66
  36. The most common route of breast cancer metastasis is through the mammary lymphatic network. An accurate assessment of the axillary lymph node (ALN) burden before surgery can avoid unnecessary axillary surgery,...

    Authors: Ranze Cai, Li Deng, Hua Zhang, Hongwei Zhang and Qian Wu
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2024 19:63
  37. Accurate segmentation of gastric tumors from CT scans provides useful image information for guiding the diagnosis and treatment of gastric cancer. However, automated gastric tumor segmentation from 3D CT image...

    Authors: Ning Yuan, Yongtao Zhang, Kuan Lv, Yiyao Liu, Aocai Yang, Pianpian Hu, Hongwei Yu, Xiaowei Han, Xing Guo, Junfeng Li, Tianfu Wang, Baiying Lei and Guolin Ma
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2024 24:63
  38. Accurate deformable registration of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans containing pathologies is challenging due to changes in tissue appearance. In this paper, we developed a novel automated three-dimensi...

    Authors: Alexander F. I. Osman, Kholoud S. Al-Mugren, Nissren M. Tamam and Bilal Shahine
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2024 19:61
  39. The brachytherapy is an indispensable treatment for gynecological tumors, but the quality and efficiency of brachytherapy training for residents is still unclear.

    Authors: Mohan Dong, Changhao Liu, Junfang Yan, Yong Zhu, Yutian Yin, Jia Wang, Ying Zhang, Lichun Wei and Lina Zhao
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2024 19:60
  40. EBUS-TBNA has emerged as an important minimally invasive procedure for the diagnosis and staging of lung cancer. Our objective was to evaluate the effect of different specimen preparation from aspirates on the...

    Authors: Hansheng Wang, Jiankun Wang, Yan Liu, Yunyun Wang, Yanhui Zhou, Dan Yu, Hui You, Tao Ren, Yijun Tang and Meifang Wang
    Citation: Diagnostic Pathology 2024 19:61
  41. To create radiomics signatures based on habitat to assess the instant response in lung metastases of colorectal cancer (CRC) after radiofrequency ablation (RFA).

    Authors: Haozhe Huang, Hong Chen, Dezhong Zheng, Chao Chen, Ying Wang, Lichao Xu, Yaohui Wang, Xinhong He, Yuanyuan Yang and Wentao Li
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2024 24:44
  42. Oral squamous cell carcinoma in minors is considered to be a distinct entity from OSCC in older patients, with an uncertain etiology. Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection may trigger the initiation and promote...

    Authors: Ningxiang Wu, Yonghui Li, Xiaokun Ma, Zhen Huang, Zhuoxuan Chen, Weihua Chen and Ran Zhang
    Citation: Diagnostic Pathology 2024 19:51
  43. Primary mucoepidermoid carcinomas (MECs) of the sinonasal tract and nasopharynx are rare entities that represent a diagnostic challenge, especially in biopsy samples. Herein, we present a case series of MECs o...

    Authors: Chunyan Hu, Lan Lin, Ming Ye, Yifeng Liu, Qiang Huang, Cuncun Yuan, Ji Sun and Hui Sun
    Citation: Diagnostic Pathology 2024 19:46
  44. Identifying breast cancer (BC) patients with germline breast cancer susceptibility gene (gBRCA) mutation is important. The current criteria for germline testing for BC remain controversial. This study aimed to de...

    Authors: Tingting Deng, Jianwen Liang, Cuiju Yan, Mengqian Ni, Huiling Xiang, Chunyan Li, Jinjing Ou, Qingguang Lin, Lixian Liu, Guoxue Tang, Rongzhen Luo, Xin An, Yi Gao and Xi Lin
    Citation: Cancer Imaging 2024 24:31
  45. This study aimed to present a deep-learning network called contrastive learning-based cycle generative adversarial networks (CLCGAN) to mitigate streak artifacts and correct the CT value in four-dimensional co...

    Authors: Nannan Cao, Ziyi Wang, Jiangyi Ding, Heng Zhang, Sai Zhang, Liugang Gao, Jiawei Sun, Kai Xie and Xinye Ni
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2024 19:20
  46. This study aimed to investigate the value of clinical, radiomic features extracted from gross tumor volumes (GTVs) delineated on CT images, dose distributions (Dosiomics), and fusion of CT and dose distributio...

    Authors: Zahra Mansouri, Yazdan Salimi, Mehdi Amini, Ghasem Hajianfar, Mehrdad Oveisi, Isaac Shiri and Habib Zaidi
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2024 19:12
  47. Stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) is a treatment option for patients with early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who are unfit for surgery. Some patients may experience distant metastasis. This study ...

    Authors: Lu Yu, Zhen Zhang, HeQing Yi, Jin Wang, Junyi Li, Xiaofeng Wang, Hui Bai, Hong Ge, Xiaoli Zheng, Jianjiao Ni, Haoran Qi, Yong Guan, Wengui Xu, Zhengfei Zhu, Ligang Xing, Andre Dekker…
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2024 19:10