Current applications and future perspectives of artificial intelligence in functional urology and neurourology: how far can we get?

In the last few years, the scientific community has seen an increasing interest towards the potential applications of artificial intelligence in medicine and healthcare. In this context, urology represents an area of rapid development, particularly in uro-oncology, where a wide range of applications has focused on prostate cancer diagnosis. Other urological branches are also starting to explore the potential advantages of AI in the diagnostic and therapeutic process, and functional urology and neurourology are among them. Although the experiences in this sense have been quite limited so far, some AI applications have already started to show potential benefits, especially for urodynamic and imaging interpretation, as well as for the development of AI-based predictive models for treatment response. A few experiences on the use of ChatGPT to answer questions on functional urology and neurourology topics have also been reported. Conversely, AI applications in functional urology surgery remain largely unexplored. This paper provides a critical overview of the current evidence on this topic, highlighting the potential benefits for the diagnostic workflow, therapeutic evaluation and surgical training, as well as the current limitations that need to be addressed to enable the integration of this tools in the clinical practice in the future.