AI in radiology: From promise to practice - A guide to effective integration

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform the field of diagnostic radiology, important obstacles still inhibit its integration into clinical environments. Foremost among them is the inability to integrate clinical information and prior and concurrent imaging examinations, which can lead to diagnostic errors that could irreversibly alter patient care. For AI to succeed in modern clinical practice, model training and algorithm development need to account for relevant background information that may influence the presentation of the patient in question. While AI is often remarkably accurate in distinguishing binary outcomes-hemorrhage vs. no hemorrhage; fracture vs. no fracture-the narrow scope of current training datasets prevents AI from examining the entire clinical context of the image in question. In this article, we provide an overview of the ways in which failure to account for clinical data and prior imaging can adversely affect AI interpretation of imaging studies. We then showcase how emerging techniques such as multimodal fusion and combined neural networks can take advantage of both clinical and imaging data, as well as how development strategies like domain adaptation can ensure greater generalizability of AI algorithms across diverse and dynamic clinical environments.