Artificial Intelligence–Driven Cancer Diagnostics: Enhancing Radiology and Pathology through Reproducibility, Explainability, and Multimodality

Abstract

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in cancer research has significantly advanced radiology, pathology, and multimodal approaches, offering unprecedented capabilities in image analysis, diagnosis, and treatment planning. AI techniques provide standardized assistance to clinicians, in which many diagnostic and predictive tasks are manually conducted, causing low reproducibility. These AI methods can additionally provide explainability to help clinicians make the best decisions for patient care. This review explores state-of-the-art AI methods, focusing on their application in image classification, image segmentation, multiple instance learning, generative models, and self-supervised learning. In radiology, AI enhances tumor detection, diagnosis, and treatment planning through advanced imaging modalities and real-time applications. In pathology, AI-driven image analysis improves cancer detection, biomarker discovery, and diagnostic consistency. Multimodal AI approaches can integrate data from radiology, pathology, and genomics to provide comprehensive diagnostic insights. Emerging trends, challenges, and future directions in AI-driven cancer research are discussed, emphasizing the transformative potential of these technologies in improving patient outcomes and advancing cancer care. This article is part of a special series: Driving Cancer Discoveries with Computational Research, Data Science, and Machine Learning/AI.