Artificial intelligence-based ultrasound imaging technologies for hepatic diseases

Ultrasound (US) imaging is a non-invasive, real-time, economical, and convenient imaging modality that has been widely used in diagnosing and treating hepatic diseases. Artificial intelligence (AI) technology can predict or make decisions based on the experience of clinical experts and knowledge obtained from training data. This technology can help clinicians improve the detection efficiency and evaluate hepatic diseases, promote clinical treatment of the liver, and predict the response of the liver after treatment. This review summarizes the current rapid development of US technology and related AI methods in the diagnosis and treatment of hepatic diseases. Covered topics include steatosis grading, fibrosis staging, detection of focal liver lesions, US image segmentation, multimodal image registration, and other applications. At present, the field of AI in US imaging is still in its early stages. With the future progress of AI technology, AI-based US imaging can further improve diagnosis, reduce medical costs, and optimize US-based clinical workflow. This technology has broad prospects for application to hepatic diseases.