Applications of natural language processing in radiology: A systematic review

Recent advances in performance of natural language processing (NLP) techniques have spurred wider use and more sophisticated applications of NLP in radiology. This study systematically reviews the trends and applications of NLP in radiology within the last five years.

A search of three databases of peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers from January 1, 2016 to April 21, 2021 resulted in a total of 228 publications included in the review. Manuscripts were analyzed by several factors, including clinical application, study setting, NLP technique, and performance.

Of the 228 included publications, there was an overall increase in number of studies published with an increase in use of machine learning models. NLP models showed high performance: >50% of publications reported F1 > 0.91. There was variable sample size across the studies with a median of 3708 data points, most commonly radiology reports. 145 studies utilized data from a single academic center. Applications were classified as clinical (n = 87), technical (n = 66), quality improvement (n = 61), research (n = 9), and education (n = 5).

There has been a continued increase in number of studies involving NLP in radiology. Newer NLP techniques, including word embedding, deep learning, and transformers, are being applied and show improved performance. There has been growth in the interpretative and non-interpretative use of NLP techniques in radiology and has great capacity to improve patient care and delivery. Although the performance and breadth of NLP applications is impressive, there is an overall lack of high-level evidence for actual clinical application of published tools.

NLP applications in radiology has been increasing studied and more accurate in the last 5 years. More direct clinical application and portability of the NLP pipelines is need to reach the technology's full potential.