Artificial intelligence predicts lung cancer radiotherapy response: A meta-analysis

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has clustered patients based on clinical features into sub-clusters to stratify high-risk and low-risk groups to predict outcomes in lung cancer after radiotherapy and has gained much more attention in recent years. Given that the conclusions vary considerably, this meta-analysis was conducted to investigate the combined predictive effect of AI models on lung cancer. This study was performed according to PRISMA guidelines. PubMed, ISI Web of Science, and Embase databases were searched for relevant literature. Outcomes, including overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS), progression-free survival (PFS), and local control (LC), were predicted using AI models in patients with lung cancer after radiotherapy, and were used to calculate the pooled effect. Quality, heterogeneity, and publication bias of the included studies were also evaluated. Eighteen articles with 4719 patients were eligible for this meta-analysis. The combined hazard ratios (HRs) of the included studies for OS, LC, PFS, and DFS of lung cancer patients were 2.55 (95 % confidence interval (CI) = 1.73–3.76), 2.45 (95 % CI = 0.78–7.64), 3.84 (95 % CI = 2.20–6.68), and 2.66 (95 % CI = 0.96–7.34), respectively. The combined area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC) of the included articles on OS and LC in patients with lung cancer was 0.75 (95 % CI = 0.67–0.84), and 0.80 (95%CI = 0.0.68–0.95), respectively. The clinical feasibility of predicting outcomes using AI models after radiotherapy in patients with lung cancer was demonstrated. Large-scale, prospective, multicenter studies should be conducted to more accurately predict the outcomes in patients with lung cancer.