Oral Cancer Screening by Artificial Intelligence-Oriented Interpretation of Optical Coherence Tomography Images

Early diagnosis of oral cancer is critical to improve the survival rate of patients. The current strategies for screening of patients for oral premalignant and malignant lesions unfortunately miss a significant number of involved patients. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an optical imaging modality that has been widely investigated in the field of oncology for identification of cancerous entities. Since the interpretation of OCT images requires professional training and OCT images contain information that cannot be inferred visually, artificial intelligence (AI) with trained algorithms has the ability to quantify visually undetectable variations, thus overcoming the barriers that have postponed the involvement of OCT in the process of screening of oral neoplastic lesions. This literature review aimed to highlight the features of precancerous and cancerous oral lesions on OCT images and specify how AI can assist in screening and diagnosis of such pathologies.