AI in Thyroid Cancer Diagnosis: Techniques, Trends, and Future Directions

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has significantly impacted thyroid cancer diagnosis in recent years, offering advanced tools and methodologies that promise to revolutionize patient outcomes. This review provides an exhaustive overview of the contemporary frameworks employed in the field, focusing on the objective of AI-driven analysis and dissecting methodologies across supervised, unsupervised, and ensemble learning. Specifically, we delve into techniques such as deep learning, artificial neural networks, traditional classification, and probabilistic models (PMs) under supervised learning. With its prowess in clustering and dimensionality reduction, unsupervised learning (USL) is explored alongside ensemble methods, including bagging and potent boosting algorithms. The thyroid cancer datasets (TCDs) are integral to our discussion, shedding light on vital features and elucidating feature selection and extraction techniques critical for AI-driven diagnostic systems. We lay out the standard assessment criteria across classification, regression, statistical, computer vision, and ranking metrics, punctuating the discourse with a real-world example of thyroid cancer detection using AI. Additionally, this study culminates in a critical analysis, elucidating current limitations and delineating the path forward by highlighting open challenges and prospective research avenues. Through this comprehensive exploration, we aim to offer readers a panoramic view of AI’s transformative role in thyroid cancer diagnosis, underscoring its potential and pointing toward an optimistic future.