Application of artificial intelligence in chest radiology

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has its earliest roots in ancient history and during the modern age the assumption that a human process could be mechanized was furtherly developed by Western philosophers. The term was coined for the first time in 1956, and in 1976 CASNET - a causal-associational network - was introduced in clinical practice as one of the very first prototypes of AI applied to medicine. The technological progress in the last three decades brought new interest and a significant development in the Artificial Intelligence field, which currently includes computational algorithms that can perform tasks once considered exclusive to human intelligence. Nowadays, there are several methods of Artificial Intelligence, above all machine learning - in which a training stage is needed by the algorithm to recognize specific features - and deep learning - in which algorithms form artificial neural networks in order to simulate the performances of neural networks of the human brain. There is currently an increasing application of AI in radiology and chest imaging is crucially involved in this topic: the aim of this narrative review is thus to describe all the possible applications of different methods of AI in thoracic radiology, regarding diagnostic imaging as well as interventional procedures.