Artificial intelligence-aided ultrasound imaging in hepatopancreatobiliary surgery: where are we now?

Artificial intelligence (AI) models have been applied in various medical imaging modalities and surgical disciplines, however the current status and progress of ultrasound-based AI models within hepatopancreatobiliary surgery have not been evaluated in literature. Therefore, this review aimed to provide an overview of ultrasound-based AI models used for hepatopancreatobiliary surgery, evaluating current advancements, validation, and predictive accuracies.

Databases PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane, and Web of Science were searched for studies using AI models on ultrasound for patients undergoing hepatopancreatobiliary surgery. To be eligible for inclusion, studies needed to apply AI methods on ultrasound imaging for patients undergoing hepatopancreatobiliary surgery. The Probast risk of bias tool was used to evaluate the methodological quality of AI methods.

AI models have been primarily used within hepatopancreatobiliary surgery, to predict tumor recurrence, differentiate between tumoral tissues, and identify lesions during ultrasound imaging. Most studies have combined radiomics with convolutional neural networks, with AUCs up to 0.98.

Ultrasound-based AI models have demonstrated promising accuracies in predicting early tumoral recurrence and even differentiating between tumoral tissue types during and after hepatopancreatobiliary surgery. However, prospective studies are required to evaluate if these results will remain consistent and externally valid.