BPG is committed to discovery and dissemination of knowledge
Review
Copyright: ©Author(s) 2026.
Artif Intell Gastroenterol. Nov 8, 2026; 7(3): 125000
Published online Nov 8, 2026. doi: 10.35712/aig.125000
Table 1 Studies evaluating applications of artificial intelligence in esophageal diseases
Ref.
Clinical application
Data type
AI method
Sample size
Study design, center design, and validation design
Major performance metric
Principal limitation
Pace et al[8]GERD vs controls, EE vs NERD discriminationQUID questionnaire (clinical/symptom data)ANN, TWIST evolutionary algorithm577 patients, 94 controlsProspective, multicenter (60 centers), resampling-based training, testing, and validationAccuracy: 99.2% for GERD vs controls, 66.5% for EE vs NERDPoor discrimination between EE and NERD
Huang et al[11]GERD diagnosisEndoscopic images of esophagogastric junctionHHDF-SVM39 patients, 108 controlsDiagnostic accuracy study, single-center, 10-fold cross-validationAccuracy: 93.2%, sensitivity: 94.9%, performance exceeded inexperienced endoscopistsSmall sample size, no automated LA grading
Wang et al[9]LA classification of GERDConventional and NBI endoscopic imagesGERD-VGGNet496 patients, 464 development cohort, 32 external test cohortRetrospective, single-center, 10-fold cross-validation, external test setNBI accuracy: 99.2% internally, 87.5% external testing, external test accuracy exceeded young trainee endoscopistsSmall external test set, overfitting without augmentation
Yen et al[10]LA classification of GERDNBI endoscopic imagesGERD-VGGNet features, random forest671 development images, 32 test imagesRetrospective, single-center, 10-fold cross-validation, independent test setAccuracy: 98.4% internally, 92.5% independent testingRetrospective design, small independent test set
Ge et al[12]Hill classification of gastroesophageal flap valveRGB endoscopic imagesResNet-50, dual attention (EDA + SE)3256 images, 2589 for training, 334 for validation, 333 for testRetrospective, single-center, training, validation, and independent test setsAccuracy: 93.39%, AUC: 0.989Single-center, reduced performance for adjacent categories (Hill II vs III)
Rogers et al[13]Automated baseline impedance and reflux assessmentpH-impedance monitoring dataDecision tree analysis325 individuals, 117 symptomatic off-PPI, 93 symptomatic on-PPI, 115 controlsExploratory observational cohort, multicenter, comparison with manual reference standardsEvent identification accuracy: 88.5%, AUC: 0.766 for treatment-response prediction, calibration: regression agreement with manual MNBI, r2 = 0.79-0.86Proof-of-concept, excluded very low baseline impedance cases
Zhou et al[14]Reflux event identification24-hour pH-impedance monitoringStructured State Space (S4) model45 patients, 25 for training, 20 for testRetrospective, single-center, training, validation, and independent test setsAUC: 0.87 (95%CI: 0.85-0.89), specificity: 80.8%, threshold calibrated to expert false-positive rateSmall sample size, relatively limited sensitivity
Wong et al[15]Reflux episodes and PSPW index assessment24-hour impedance-pH monitoringDeep residual network (ResNet)106 patientsRetrospective analysis, single-center, validation against manual Wingate criteriaAccuracy: 87% for reflux episodes, 82% for PSPW index, calibration: manual Wingate criteria used as reference standardClinical adjunct, manual analysis remains necessary
Rosenfeld et al[16]BE detection/risk predictionQuestionnaire (symptoms/risk factors)Logistic regression with IG and CFS feature selection1299 (BEST2/training and internal validation), 398 (BOOST/external validation)Case-control, multicenter, internal split-sample, external independent cohortTraining AUC: 0.87 (95%CI: 0.84-0.90), internal: 0.86 (95%CI: 0.83-0.89), external: 0.81 (95%CI: 0.74-0.84), calibration: Probability output calibrated to 90% sensitivity, log-loss/precision-recall assessedCase-control enrichment may overestimate performance, requires prospective primary-care validation
Iyer et al[17]BE and EAC predictionEHRsEnsemble transformer-based ML model8476 BE cases, 1539 EAC cases, 252276 controlsRetrospective cohort, multicenter, 10% model holdout setAUROC: 0.84 for both BE and EACLimited explainability, requires validation outside Mayo Clinic EHR systems
Berman et al[18]BE segment length predictionDigitized whole-slide images (Cytosponge-TFF3)CNN for tile identification, logistic regression529 (BEST2), 158 (BEST3)Case-control, RCT evaluation, multicenter, 5-fold cross-validation, independent RCT cohortInternal accuracy: 0.84 (95%CI: 0.77-0.90), precision: 0.95 (95%CI: 0.87-1.00), RCT precision: 0.91 (95%CI: 0.85-0.97), clinically relevant BE: 55% could avoid gastroscopy, false-negative rate 5.1%Small independent test set, 5.1% false-negative rate for clinically relevant BE
Faghani et al[19]Histological dysplasia classification (NDBE, LGD, HGD)Digitized histology whole-slide imagesEnsemble deep learning (YOLO, ResNet101)542 patients, 70% for training, 20% for validation, 10% for testRetrospective validation, random 70/20/10 train/validation/test splitLGD sensitivity: 81.3%, specificity: 100%, NDBE/HGD > 90%, F1-score: 0.90-1.0Pilot-scale validation, real-world community pathology performance unknown
Gao et al[20]ESCC and esophagogastric junction adenocarcinoma risk prediction105 cytological, 15 epidemiological featuresAutomated ML-based prediction tool17498 eligible participantsNationwide, multicohort, prospective, multicenter (39 hospitals), internal testing, community-based validationInternal AUROC: 0.960 (95%CI: 0.937-0.977), prospective AUROC: 0.964 (95%CI: 0.920-0.990), clinically: Unnecessary endoscopies avoided in 90.3% of the testing cohort and 92.8% of community screening participantsPrimarily focused on resource optimization for endoscopy in China
Fockens et al[21]Detection of early Barrett’s neoplasiaWhite-light endoscopic images and videosEfficientNet-Lite1 encoder, MobileNetV2 DeepLabV3+ decoder14046 images from 2506 patients for trainingModel development and validation, multicenter (15 international centers), all-comers and enriched benchmarking test setsSensitivity: 95% (95%CI: 88%-98%) for images, 97% (95%CI: 90%-99%) for videos in all-comers setTraining relied on high-quality expert images, subtle neoplastic lesions were scarce
Yuan et al[22]Detection and delineation of superficial ESCC and precancerous lesionsNon-magnified NBIAI-based detection and delineation system10047 still images and 140 videos (1112 patients)Multicenter development and validation, multicenter (4 hospitals), internal/external image test sets and prospective clinical evaluationAccuracy: 92.4% internal, 89.9% external, 91.4% prospectiveAccurate delineation of lesion margins remains a key clinical challenge
Chempak Kumar et al[23]Classification and staging of ESCC, EAC, and BEEndoscopic imagesMulti-CNN (Xception, MobileNetV2, GoogLeNet, Darknet53), ABC optimization, SVM1028 images (523 BE, 217 ESCC, 288 EAC)CAD network development, single-center, 3-fold cross-validationOverall classification accuracy: 97.76%Relatively small dataset
Lu et al[24]Prognostic prediction in ESCC27 clinical and laboratory blood parametersRandom survival forest2521 consecutive patients, 1765 for training and 756 for testRetrospective, single-center, 70% training/30% test splitC-index: 0.746, 5-year AUC: 0.771Single-region cohort, retrospective design limits generalizability
Popa et al[25]Classification of esophageal motility disordersSingle wet-swallow raw HREM imagesDL (CNN, Inception V3)157 patients (1570 images), 70% training, 15% testing, 15% validationRetrospective, single-center, 70% training/15% testing/15% validationOverall accuracy: 94% (validation dataset)Small sample size, diagnosis-purity bias from exclusion of complex cases
Takahashi et al[26]Prediction of persistent symptoms and reflux esophagitis after POEM in achalasiaDemographic data, disease duration, HRM, esophagographyML clustering and predictive models1824 treatment-naïve patients including 1778 undergoing POEMMulticenter cohort, model development for risk stratificationAUC: 0.70 for persistent symptoms, 0.61 for reflux esophagitisWeak predictive performance for post-POEM reflux esophagitis
Carlson et al[27]Classification of achalasia subtypes using FLIP panometryFLIP panometrySupervised ML (decision trees)180 adult patientsRetrospective analysis of a prospective cohort, single-center, 140 training/40 test cohortSpastic accuracy: 90%, non-spastic accuracy: 78%Marked reduction in test-set accuracy, limited generalizability due to human-scored variables
Wang et al[28]GEV segmentation and RC sign detectionEndoscopic images and videosENDOANGEL-GEV (U-Net++, DCNN, DBSCAN)1156 training patients, 161 prospective patientsMulticenter retrospective with prospective observational, internal, multicenter video, and prospective validationEV segmentation mIoU: 0.8087 (95%CI: 0.7968-0.8206), prospective RC detection accuracy: 94.62% (95%CI: 89.11%-97.56%), clinical impact: Correct prophylactic intervention in 12.3% additional patients and avoidance of unnecessary prophylaxis in 52.6% low-risk patientsSingle-arm design, potential bias from high proportion of severe Child-Pugh C cases
Chen et al[29]GEV detection and classificationEndoscopic images and videosENDOANGEL (DCNN)6189 patients with 14718 imagesMulticenter retrospective, independent image and multicenter video validationEV detection accuracy: 97.00%, GV detection accuracy: 92.00%Focused mainly on detection/classification, lacked later interpretable logic
Hong et al[30]Prediction of 12-month EV bleedingEndoscopic imagesDL (transfer learning with EfficientNet)1075 images (675 training/validation, 400 test)Multicenter retrospective cohort, internal and external validationEfficientNet accuracy: 0.893, recall: 0.870Reliance on single endoscopic images rather than multiple views or clinical data
Wang et al[31]Prediction of 12-month EV bleedingEndoscopic images and clinical structured dataMMML stacking model (EfficientNet + 6 algorithms)341 patients, 161 patients in the external test cohortMulticenter retrospective cohort, internal validation and external testingAUC: 0.975, sensitivity: 0.952No comparison with Baveno criteria, no elastography data, limited sample size
Table 2 Studies evaluating applications of artificial intelligence in gastric diseases
Ref.
Clinical application
Data type
AI method
Sample size
Study design, center design, and validation design
Major performance metric
Principal limitation
Shichijo et al[32]Detection of H. pylori infectionEndoscopic images (WLI)22-layer deep CNN with GoogLeNet32208 images (development), 11481 images from 397 patients (test)Retrospective, single-center, independent test set comparisonAccuracy: 87.7%, 11481 images analyzed in approximately 3.2 minutes vs approximately 230 minutes by endoscopistsSingle-center study
Liu et al[35]Kyoto gastritis classificationGastric endoscopy images (WLI and NBI)Five GAM-EfficientNet models29013 images from 2087 patients, test set of 528 images, compared with 10 endoscopistsRetrospective, single-center, internal training, validation, and testing setsAverage accuracy: 78.70%Single-center study, imbalanced sample distribution, lack of paired histological validation
Hirasawa et al[36]Gastric cancer detectionEndoscopic images (WLI, chromoendoscopy and NBI)CNN with Single Shot MultiBox Detector13584 training images, 2296 test imagesRetrospective, multicenter training, independent test set of consecutive patientsSensitivity: 92.2%, detected 100% of invasive cancers and 98.6% of lesions ≥ 6 mm, processed 2296 images in 47 secondsTest set included only cancer cases with high disease prevalence, single endoscope type used
Ikenoyama et al[37]Early gastric cancer detectionEndoscopic images (WLI)CNN with Single Shot MultiBox Detector13584 training images, 2940 test imagesRetrospective multicenter training, single-center test set, independent comparison with 67 endoscopistsSensitivity: 58.4% (95%CI: 51.4%-65.1%) in independent external test set, reading time 45.5 seconds vs 173 minutes for endoscopistsTest set limited to a single center and still images, low PPV of 26.0%
Luo et al[38]Esophageal and gastric cancer detectionEndoscopy images (WLI)Deep learning with GRAIDS1036496 images from 84424 individualsMulticenter case-control diagnostic study, internal, prospective, and external validationAccuracy: 0.915-0.977 (external validation sets)Only standard WLIs were used
Zhang et al[40]Early gastric cancer detectionGastroscopic imagesImproved Mask R-CNN1120 images of EGC (140 healthy, 980 EGC cases)Retrospective, single-center, fivefold cross-validation and testing datasetAccuracy: 93.9% (internal validation and testing dataset)Small primary dataset from a single center, generalizability requires further verification
Bang et al[39]Prediction of submucosal invasion in gastric neoplasmsWLI endoscopic imagesAutomated DL2899 training images, 1597 prospective test imagesMulticenter validation, training from one hospital and testing at another, prospective multicenter external testAccuracy: 89.3% (95%CI: 85.1%-93.5%) (external validation), AI-assisted trainee accuracy 81.6% vs 68.4% without AITraining images from a single institution
Gong et al[42]Gastric neoplasm detection and classificationReal-time endoscopyDL clinical decision support system5017 training images, 2524 pilot proceduresRandomized pilot study and prospective multicenter external testClassification accuracy: 81.5% (prospective multicenter external test)Improvement in real-time lesion detection rate was not statistically significant
Wu et al[43]Gastric neoplasm detectionReal-time white-light endoscopyDL system1812 patientsSingle-center tandem RCTMiss rate: 6.1% with AI vs 27.3% with routine examinationSingle-center design, endoscopists were not blinded to randomization
Xu et al[44]Detection of precancerous lesions and adenomasDigestive endoscopyENDOANGELProspective intervention phasesProspective, randomized, single-center clinical trialIM detection rate: 14.23% vs 9.15%Single-center trial design
Calder et al[45]Automated artifact detection and signal recovery in gastric body-surface mappingHigh-resolution gastric myoelectrical activity data from BSGMAutomated artifact detection and rejection algorithm with signal recovery10 patients, 176 data samplesProspective validation study, single-centerAccuracy: 95%, sensitivity: 96%, specificity: 95% against expert markersSmall sample size and demographic bias, with all participants being female
Table 3 Studies evaluating applications of artificial intelligence in small intestinal diseases
Ref.
Clinical application
Data type
AI method
Sample size
Study design, center design, and validation design
Major performance metrics
Principal limitation
Aoki et al[47]Detection of various small intestinal mucosal lesionsCE images for training and videos for testingDeep CNN66028 images for training, 379 small-bowel videos for testingMulticenter retrospective, independent test set of consecutive videos from 3 institutions, external validationPer-patient detection rate: 99%, sensitivity for mucosal breaks 100% (95%CI: 88.4%-100%) and bleeding 100%, substantially reduced reading workload compared with conventional methodPer-patient assessment may not reflect detection of every individual small lesion
Ding et al[48]Detection of various small intestinal mucosal lesionsSB-CE images and videosResNet-based CNN auxiliary modelTraining: 158235 images/1970 patients, validation: 113426569 images/5000 patientsMulticenter retrospective, 77 medical centers, comparison of conventional and AI-assisted reading in 5000 patients, internal validationSensitivity: 99.88% (95%CI: 99.67%-99.96%) per patient and 99.90% (95%CI: 99.74%-99.97%) per lesion, reading time reduced from 96.6 ± 22.4 to 5.9 ± 2.1 minutes/patient, diagnostic yield increased from 74.57% to 99.88%Retrospective design requires prospective evaluation
Liu et al[49]Small-bowel tumor detectionClinical patient video dataMulti-scale curvelet analysis and fractal technology with SVM89 clinical patientsRetrospective, single-center context, feature extraction and classification testing on clinical video frames, internal validationSensitivity: 97.8%, specificity: 96.7%Small dataset of only 89 patients
Leenhardt et al[50]Detection of gastrointestinal angiectasiaSB-CE still framesCNN with semantic segmentation6360 frames from 4166 CE videos, 600-frame independent test setMulticenter retrospective using a national database, two separate datasets for ML and algorithm testing, internal validationSensitivity: 100% (95%CI: 100%-100%), specificity: 96% (95%CI: 93.78%-98.22%)Focused exclusively on typical GIA, performance on full-length videos not confirmed
Mascarenhas et al[51]Detection of panendoscopic vascular lesionsMulti-brand and multi-device CE framesRegNetY-based CNN34655 frames from 1188 examinationsMulticenter retrospective cohort study, 5-fold cross-validation and independent exam-split test setSensitivity: 86.4%, specificity: 98.3%, accuracy: 95.0%, AUC 0.984 (95%CI: 0.977-0.991)Retrospective selection bias, small number of frames in the testing dataset
Brodersen et al[52]Detection of suspected CDPan-enteric CE videosAXARO® DL platform131 patients with suspected CDMulticenter prospective, blinded trial, prospective external validationSensitivity: 92%-96%, specificity: 90%-93%, observer-specific AUC 0.91-0.94 (95%CIs: 0.86-0.98), 97.1% reduction in images requiring review, median reading time approximately 3.2 minutes/patient, 48.5% potentially ruled out without full video reviewRelatively small patient cohort
Scheppach et al[54]Detection of duodenal villous atrophyEndoscopic still imagesResNet18 DL model1704 images for internal validation, 349 images for external validationMulticenter retrospective case-control, internal cross-validation and independent external test setSensitivity: 90%, specificity: 76%, accuracy: 84% (external validation)High risk of selection bias due to retrospective case-control design
Stoleru et al[55]Detection of celiac disease with villous atrophyCE imagesLinear SVM with image-processing kernels and filters109 films, 100 frames per film, 51-film test setRetrospective, single-center, comparison of Linear SVM, Fine KNN, and Weighted KNN, internal validationAccuracy: 94.1%, sensitivity: 96%Real-world clinical utility for full video streams was not the primary focus
Gruver et al[57]Assessment of histologic features of celiac diseaseWhole-slide images of IHC sectionsDenseNet2 CNN classifiers116 small-intestine biopsies, matched cohort of 28 patient pairsSingle-center retrospective pilot study, internal validationMore than 90% concordance with manual scores in matched biopsiesSmall pilot study, manual selection of tissue by a pathologist remains necessary
Malagelada et al[58]Identification of intestinal motor dysfunctionCE imagesSVM36 patients and 50 healthy subjectsSingle-center prospective pilot study, leave-one-out cross-validation100% identification of patients meeting manometric criteria for dysmotilityComplexity of parameters analyzed requires a much larger validation dataset
Cheng et al[59]Detection of high-grade small-bowel obstructionAbdominal radiographsInception-v3 CNN7768 radiographs from 3212 patients, held-out test set of 2420 consecutive radiographsSingle-center retrospective study, two-stage training and evaluation on a held-out test set, internal validationSensitivity: 91.4%, specificity: 91.9%, ROC AUC: 0.971Retrospective design, potential variation in ground truth as the second test set was assessed by a single radiologist
Table 4 Studies evaluating applications of artificial intelligence in large intestinal diseases
Ref.
Clinical application
Data type
AI method
Sample size
Study design, center design, and validation design
Major performance metrics
Principal limitation
Misawa et al[60]Colorectal polyp detectionColonoscopy videosConvolutional 3D neural network73 patients, learning set: 411 short videos/59 patients, independent test set: 135 short videos/14 patientsSingle-center retrospective, independent test set, internal validationSensitivity 90.0%, specificity 63.3%High false-positive rate (60%) in polyp-based analysis
Wang et al[63]Polyp and adenoma detectionReal-time colonoscopy video streamDL with SegNet-based DCNN1058 patients, 522 CADe vs 536 controlSingle-center RCTADR 29.1% vs 20.3% in control, OR 1.61 (95%CI: 1.213-2.135)Single-center study, inability to blind endoscopists
Gong et al[64]Adenoma detection and technical qualityReal-time colonoscopy videosENDOANGEL with DCNNs and perceptual hash algorithms704 patients (355 ENDOANGEL vs 349 control)Single-center RCTADR 16% vs 8% in control, OR 2.30 (95%CI: 1.40-3.77)Single-center study, artificially defined speed categories
Repici et al[61]Colorectal neoplasia detectionReal-time colonoscopy imagesDL with GI-Genius685 subjects (341 CADe vs 344 control), AI training set: 2684 polyps from 840 patientsMulticenter RCTADR 54.8% vs 40.4% in control, RR 1.30 (95%CI: 1.14-1.45)Expert setting with experienced operators, potential psychological bias
Karsenti et al[62]Colorectal adenoma detectionRoutine real-time colonoscopyReal-time CADe with GI Genius 2.0.22015 participants (1003 CADe vs 1012 control)Single-center RCTADR 37.5% vs 33.7% in control, absolute difference 4.1 percentage points (95%CI: 0.0-8.1, P = 0.051)Primary ADR outcome reached only borderline statistical significance
Byrne et al[66]Polyp differentiation, adenoma vs hyperplastic polypUnaltered NBI colonoscopy video framesDCNN with Inception125 diminutive polypsRetrospective single-center expert-operator videos, independent test set, internal validationAccuracy 94% (95%CI: 86-97), sensitivity 98% (95%CI: 92-100) for adenomasVideos collected by a single expert operator, not tested on live patients
Kather et al[68]Microsatellite instability predictionH&E-stained histology slidesDeep residual learning with ResNet18Various cohorts (discovery: 1380, external: 378)Multicenter discovery and validation, external validationPatient-level AUC 0.84 (95%CI: 0.72-0.92) for colorectal cancerPerformance may not generalize beyond cancer types or ethnicities represented in training
Echle et al[69]Microsatellite instability predictionRoutine H&E histology slidesModified ShuffleNet DL8836 colorectal tumors, 6406 development, 771 external resection validationInternational multicenter retrospective, external validationAUROC 0.96 for dMMRPerformance significantly lower in small biopsy samples than resections
Skrede et al[70]Colorectal cancer prognosisScanned conventional H&E sectionsIntegration of 10 CNNs2473 training and tuning, 2042 validation dataRetrospective discovery and validation, independent external validationHazard ratio 3.84 (95%CI: 2.72-5.43; P < 0.0001) for poor vs good prognosisRetrospective cohorts, clinical utility requires prospective evaluation
Mossotto et al[71]Pediatric IBD classification, CD, UC and IBDUEndoscopic and histological findings from 10 GI locationsLinear SVM with RFE-CV287 children, 239-patient model development/testing cohort and independent validation of 48 patientsRetrospective single-center, internal and independent validationAccuracy 82.7% combined model, 83.3% independent validation, IBDU cases were reclassified as CD or UC with > 80% posterior probabilityLess accurate for UC (65%) than CD (94%)
Ozawa et al[72]UC endoscopic activity assessmentColonoscopy imagesCNN with GoogLeNet26304 images from 841 patients for training, 3981 images from 114 patients for testingRetrospective image analysis, internal, independent image test set validationAUROC 0.86 for Mayo 0 and 0.98 for Mayo 0-1Performance varied by location, lower accuracy in right and left colon than rectum
Maeda et al[73]UC histologic activity assessmentEndocytoscopy images at 520 × ultra-magnificationSVM using 312 extracted texture features22835 images from 187 patients, training 12900 images/87 patients, validation 9935 images from 100 patientsRetrospective validation, single-center, temporal training and validation split, internal validationAccuracy 91% (95%CI: 88-93), sensitivity 74% (95%CI: 65-81), specificity 97% (95%CI: 95-99)Images collected by experts only, no comparison with long-term clinical prognosis
Gui et al[75]UC histologic activity assessmentHistological whole-slide imagesCNN138 biopsies from 307 patientsProspective multicenter, 11 centers, 70% training and 30% testing, internal validationAccuracy 86%, sensitivity 78%, specificity 91.7%Lost predictive power in patients who had achieved endoscopic remission
Waljee et al[76]IBD outcome prediction, UC, CD and indeterminate colitisLongitudinal laboratory data and demographics from EMRRandom forest20368 patientsRetrospective cohort, National VHA database, temporal 70% training and 30% testing split, internal validationAUROC 0.85 (95%CI: 0.84-0.85) to 0.87 (95%CI: 0.87-0.88) depending on modelOlder predominantly male population may limit generalizability
Waljee et al[77]CD outcome predictionDemographic and laboratory data from clinical trialsRandom forest401 participants, repeated 70/30 training-testing splitsCohort study of three phase 3 RCTs, repeated 70% and 30% training and testing splits, internal validationAUROC 0.78 (95%CI: 0.69-0.87) for week-8 modelCRP is an imperfect proxy for remission
Das et al[78]Acute lower gastrointestinal bleeding risk predictionNon-endoscopic clinical variablesANN332 patients, 120 training, 70 internal validation, 142 external validationProspectively collected validation study, multicenter, internal and independent external validationAccuracy 87%-96% (internal validation), 93%-97% (external validation)Low PPV for mortality (31%-63%), 26 variables are more cumbersome
Ayaru et al[79]Acute lower gastrointestinal bleeding risk predictionNon-endoscopic variablesGradient boosting300 patients, 170 for training and internal validation, 130 for external validationRetrospective database study, multicenter, internal and independent external validationAccuracy 78%-88% (internal validation), 83%-91% (external validation)Model requires 39 input variables, mortality was not examined because of its rarity
Klang et al[80]Acute diverticulitis predictionEMR dataGradient boosting4997 visits, 3154 for internal validation, 1343 for external validationMulticenter retrospective cohort, internal and held-out external validationAUC 0.85 (95%CI: 0.78-0.91), sensitivity 88%, NPV 99% (external validation)Retrospective design and missing data, including CRP missing in 95% of patients
Fukui et al[81]Irritable bowel syndrome diagnosisFecal gut microbiome profiles using 16S rRNA and short-chain fatty acidsRandom forest using LASSO feature extraction111, 85 IBS patients and 26 healthy controlsProspective diagnostic study, multicenter secondary and tertiary care clinics, internal repeated 10-fold cross-validationAUC 0.911-0.920, sensitivity > 80%, specificity > 90%Small control group, lack of dietary information and functional meta-omics investigations
Table 5 Studies evaluating applications of artificial intelligence in pancreatic diseases
Ref.
Clinical application
Data type
AI method
Sample size
Study design, center design, and validation design
Major performance metric
Principal limitation
Mukherjee et al[82]PDAC predictionPrediagnostic CT scansSVM420 CT scans, 155 prediagnostic, 265 controlsRetrospective case-control, internal test set, independent internal and external NIH sets, internal and external validationAUC 0.98 (95%CI: 0.94-0.98), accuracy 92.2% (internal validation), specificity 96.2% (external validation), outperformed radiologists (mean AUC 0.66)Retrospective design, small external validation cohorts
Mukherjee et al[83]PDAC predictionStandard-of-care CT scansEnsemble with logistic regression, random forest, and XGBoost1462 scans, 969 training and 493 testRetrospective, multicenter, independent test set and external specificity validation cohortsAUC 0.82 (95%CI: 0.81-0.83), sensitivity 73.0%, specificity 81.1% (internal validation), 81.3% specificity (external validation)Retrospective design, prospective validation in high-risk cohorts is required
Alves et al[84]PDAC detectionRoutine CT scansDL3440 patients, 2224 for training, 86 for tuning, 1130 for sequestered test, multi-reader substudy of 391 cases assessed by 68 radiologistsInternational multicenter observational study, sequestered testing cohort and radiologist subsetMean AUROC 0.92 (95%CI: 0.90-0.93) (external validation), AI performance was statistically superior to the 68-radiologist comparison (P < 0.001)Observational design, results represent average radiologist performance
Placido et al[85]Pancreatic cancer predictionHealth records with ICD codesTransformer and GRU9.2 million patients from DNPR and US-VARetrospective cohort, random 10% test split and cross-application between health systems, internal and cross-validationAUROC 0.88 in Denmark and 0.78 in US-VA (internal validation), Danish model on US-VA dataset yielded AUROC 0.71Performance declined when applied across different healthcare systems
Kuwahara et al[88]IPMN classificationEUS digital still imagesDL with ResNet5050 patients, 3970 imagesRetrospective single-center, 10-fold cross-validationAccuracy 94.0%, AUC 0.98, diagnostic accuracy 94.0% vs 56.0% for human preoperative diagnosisSmall sample size, retrospective design, only surgical cases included
Kurita et al[89]Pancreatic cystic lesion classificationCyst fluid markers and clinical dataDL with TensorFlow85 patientsRetrospective, single-center, observational study, 5-fold cross-validationAUROC 0.966, accuracy 92.9%, AI outperformed cyst-fluid carcinoembryonic antigen (AUROC 0.719) and cytology (AUROC 0.739)Small sample size, single-center study, subjective input factors
Machicado et al[90]IPMN classificationnCLE video framesCNN35 patients, 15027 framesPost hoc analysis of a prospective multicenter cohort, performance on post hoc video data, internal validationAccuracy 82.9%-85.7%, sensitivity 83.3%Small patient cohort, limited to pathologically confirmed cases
Yuan et al[91]Pancreatic cystic neoplasm malignancy predictionContrast-enhanced CT scansMamba U-Net and XGBoost1835 patients, 1249 primary cohort (999 training, 250 validation), external test sets of 173, 289 and 124 patientsMulticenter retrospective and prospective study, external test sets and prospective real-world cohort, internal and external validationAUC 0.845-0.988 (external validation), malignancy detection 81.8% (prospective validation), interpretation time reduced 23.7%, and workload reduced 39.3%Focused on intralesional features, did not incorporate peripancreatic findings
Duh et al[92]Pancreatic cystic lesion classificationAbdominal CT scansAttention Gate U-Net335 abdominal CT scans, 297 pancreatic cystic lesions and 38 controls, training 241 scans/93 patients, independent test 94 scans/43 patientsRetrospective single-center, independent testing set of 94 scans, internal validationSensitivity 93.1%, specificity 81.8%Single-center design, small control cohort, lacks external validation
Table 6 Studies evaluating applications of artificial intelligence in biliary diseases
Ref.
Clinical application
Data type
AI method
Sample size
Study design, center design, and validation design
Major performance metric
Principal limitation
Zhang et al[94]Choledocholithiasis predictionPreoperative clinical predictorsModelArts1199 patientsRetrospective, single-center, internal validationAccuracy 0.97, recall 0.97, precision 0.971Retrospective design may limit generalizability to real-world settings
Sugimoto et al[96]Distal bile duct obstruction, benign vs malignantClinical laboratory biomarkersLightGBM206 patients, 64 malignant, 142 benign, 16 excluded for missing valuesRetrospective, single-center, internal validation with 10-fold cross-validationAUROC 0.908, sensitivity 83.1%, specificity 87.2%, AUROC significantly higher than individual biomarkersSmall sample size, exclusion of markers such as CA19-9 because of missing data
Saraiva et al[99]Biliary stricture, benign vs malignantDigital single-operator cholangioscopy imagesCNN85 patients, 11855 imagesRetrospective pilot study, single-center, internal validation with 5-fold cross-validationAccuracy 94.9%, sensitivity 94.7%, specificity 92.1%, AUC 0.988Small patient cohort, static images rather than full videos
Saraiva et al[100]Malignant biliary stricture and morphologic characterizationDigital single-operator cholangioscopy imagesResNet-based CNN129 DSOC examinations, 84994 imagesRetrospective, multicenter, internal validationOverall accuracy 82.9%, AUROC 0.92, tumor vessel detection AUC 0.98, papillary projection detection AUC 0.96Tested on a single DSOC platform, technological maturity remains preclinical
Brenner et al[101]Post-ERCP pancreatitis predictionPatient-level data from 12 RCTsGradient-boosted machine7389 patients for development, 135 patients for pilotRetrospective development and prospective pilot, multicenter development and single-center pilot, internal and prospective validationAUC 0.70 (internal cross-validation), AUC 0.74 (prospective pilot)Low PPV of 15%, trial data may not reflect real-world populations
Archibugi et al[102]Post-ERCP pancreatitis predictionClinical preprocedural and procedural factorsGradient boosting1150 patientsProspective multicenter international cohort, proof-of-concept, internal validationAUC 0.70 (cross-validation), AUC 0.671 (internal test set)Moderate predictive accuracy in the final test set
Jin et al[103]Post-ERCP cholangitis prediction in malignant biliary obstructionClinical laboratory and procedural dataXGBoost1421 patients, derivation cohort 1026 (718 training, 308 testing), external validation 395Retrospective, multicenter, internal and external validationAUC 0.7670 (internal test), AUC 0.7270 (external validation cohort)Retrospective design, external validation cohort restricted to the same geographic region
Chen et al[104]Post-ERCP pancreatitis predictionPapilla radiomics from endoscopic images and clinical dataDL and ML algorithms2372 patientsRetrospective multicohort, multicenter, internal validationAUC 0.825-0.857 (internal validation and testing cohorts)Retrospective enrollment, focus on surface morphology rather than internal structural factors
Kim et al[105]Ampulla detection and cannulation difficulty predictionEndoscopic imagesCNN with U-Net and ResNet531 patients for difficulty, 451 for detectionRetrospective, multicenter, internal validation with 5-fold cross-validationmIoU 64.1% for detection, recall 61.1% for difficult casesLow recall for difficult cases, lack of radiologic data to capture internal ampullary structure
Table 7 Studies evaluating applications of artificial intelligence in liver diseases
Ref.
Clinical application
Data type
AI method
Sample size
Study design, center design, and validation design
Major performance metric
Principal limitation
Chang et al[106]NAFLD fibrosis assessmentDemographic and clinical featuresRandom forest, logistic regression, and ANN1370 patients, training 1096 and testing 274Multicenter cohort, internal validationAUC 0.89 for cirrhosisRequires further clinical validation for widespread use
Preechathammawong et al[107]NAFLD fibrosis and steatosis assessmentDigital histopathological images, H&E biopsySMART AI-PATHO, DL algorithms146 hepatic tissue specimensCross-sectional analytic, multicenter observational, comparison with pathologist interpretationsAgreement 68.4%, kappa 0.59 for all staging, 89.7% agreement for advanced fibrosisCannot assess lobular inflammation, ballooning, or variations in staining techniques
Zheng et al[108]Liver fibrosis stagingPortal venous CT imagingDRCDS, DL segmentation and classification with decision model819 patients in the development set and 175 patients in external test setsRetrospective multicenter study, internal test set and 3 external test setsAUC 0.89-0.92 (internal test), Obuchowski index 0.81-0.85 (external validation), reduced radiologist evaluation requirement by 73.7%-92.0% while maintaining/improving sensitivity and specificityRetrospective design, potential sampling errors in the biopsy reference standard
Xue et al[109]Liver fibrosis assessmentGrayscale and elastogram ultrasound imagesTransfer learning with Inception-V3466 patients undergoing partial hepatectomy, training 364 and test 102Retrospective diagnostic study, single-center, random-split internal test setAUC 0.950 (95%CI: 0.917-0.972) for Scheuer stage S4Uneven distribution of fibrosis stages
Ai et al[110]Liver fibrosis assessmentUltrasound radiofrequency signals and B-mode images2D CNN for ROI analysis and 1D CNN for classification613 participants for ROI, 237 participants for classificationFeasibility study, single-center, internal test setsAUC 0.957 for ≥ METAVIR F1 (phase-spectrum test set)Limited sample size and single-scanner diversity
Zha et al[111]Liver fibrosis assessmentMRI and clinical variablesResUNet for segmentation and CoRC logistic regression model595 patients with biopsy-proven liver fibrosisRetrospective multicenter cohort, internal and external validationAUC 0.79-0.82 (internal and external test sets)Retrospective study design
Wang et al[112]Liver fibrosis in HBV2D shear-wave elastographyDL radiomics with CNN398 patients, training 266 and validation 132Prospective multicenter study, internal and hospital-cross validationAUC 0.97 (95%CI: 0.94-0.99) for METAVIR F4 (validation set)Accuracy sensitive to the number of acquisitions
Wei et al[113]Focal liver lesion characterizationMultiphase enhanced CT imagingLiver Lesion Network4039 patientsMulticenter development study, external-center validation, and clinical verificationAUC 97.2% for benign vs malignant lesions (external centers)Primarily intended to aid areas with limited radiologist availability
Sharma et al[114]Hepatitis C detectionStandard biochemical blood parametersStacked meta-model with random forest and XGBoost, with pre-clustering869 patientsHybrid dataset from NHANES and UCI, multi-source, holdout validationAccuracy 94.82% (holdout set)Lacks validation on real-world datasets
Ercan et al[115]Autoimmune hepatitis assessmentH&E and Sirius red biopsy slidesCNN pipeline for segmentation and detection123 pairs of biopsy slides (H&E and Sirius red) from 116 patientsDiagnostic tool development, single-center, independent 20% test setAccuracy 99.4% for tissue detection (test set)Relies solely on images without clinical data
Gerussi et al[116]Autoimmune hepatitis vs primary biliary cholangitisH&E digitized biopsy slidesTransformer-based attention-based multiple instance learning with ALNE446 patients providing a dataset of 561 digitized whole-slide imagesMulticenter diagnostic study, internal cross-validation and external validationAUC 0.81 (external validation)Limited sample size and focus on Western Europe
Park et al[117]Alcohol-associated liver disease vs metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver diseaseFecal 16S rRNA sequencing dataCNN with principal component analysis674 subjects (464 for internal validation and 210 for external validation)Multicenter screening signature development, internal cross-validation and external validationAUC > 0.90 for alcohol-associated liver disease (external validation)Metagenomic signatures are not universally established
Wang et al[118]Drug-induced liver injury vs autoimmune hepatitis24 routine laboratory parametersGradient boosting decision tree2554 patientsMulticenter cohort, external and prospective validationAUROC 0.91 (95%CI: 0.900-0.928) (external validation)Web-based tool requires clinical implementation
Calderaro et al[119]HCC vs intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma and combined hepatocellular-cholangiocarcinomaH&E whole-slide imagesSelf-supervised ResNet50 with attention-based multiple instance learning1356 casesMulticenter phenotyping and reclassification study, internal cross-validation and external TCGA validationAUROC 0.94 (external TCGA validation)No ground truth for biphenotypic reclassification
Huang et al[120]Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis44 clinical variables and 250 serum metabolitesMulti-step ML616 patients (311 in the derivation cohort and 305 in the validation cohort)Multicenter development study across different countries, external validation in Finnish cohortAUROC 0.87 (derivation cohort)Requires serum metabolite measurements by NMR
Guo et al[121]Prediction of cirrhosis complications168 circulating metabolites and clinical variablesIntegrated nomogram64005 participants from the UK Biobank, training 43734, validation 20271Multicenter UK Biobank tool-development study, internal and prospective evaluationAUC 0.930 for 3-year risk (training and validation cohort)Relies on metabolites not routinely measured
Njei et al[122]High-risk metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver diseaseDemographic, clinical and laboratory dataXGBoost with SHAP5281 subjects from the NHANES databaseMulticenter observational national survey, internal holdout validationAUC 0.95 (95%CI: 0.91-0.97) (holdout test set)Lacked liver biopsy data for comparison
Kim et al[123]Prediction of hepatic decompensationMRE stiffness and clinical variablesMultivariable Cox regression1254 participants with NAFLD from an international cohortMulticenter cohort, internal random-split validationC-statistic 0.876 for 5-year risk (validation cohort)Requires MRE and has retrospective design
Nakatsuka et al[124]HCC prediction in steatotic liver diseaseH&E whole-slide imagesCNN with EfficientNetB0685 patientsRetrospective multicenter prediction study, external validation using nonpaired casesAUC 0.84 (95%CI: 0.72-0.96) (external validation cases)Retrospective design and focus on a Japanese population
Zhang et al[125]Early HCC predictionGene expression profiles using secreted genes and relative expression orderingHybrid model with relative expression ordering, feature selection, and SVM5586 tissue samplesML signature development using public databases, independent validation setsAccuracy 98.34% (independent validation)Primarily based on public databases
Sharma et al[126]Graft injury after liver transplantationDemographic, clinical and laboratory dataGraftIQ with multiclass neural network and data fusion5759 biopsiesMulticenter diagnostic study, internal test set and external validationAUC 0.934 (95%CI: 0.909-0.959) (external UHN validation set)Exclusion of biopsies with dual diagnoses
Table 8 Summary of major artificial intelligence applications in gastroenterology by clinical setting, evidence level, and implementation readiness
Application
Clinical setting
Intended user
Evidence level
External validation
Regulatory status
Unresolved limitations
Colorectal polyp/adenoma detection (CADe)[61-65]Screening/surveillance colonoscopyEndoscopistRCT meta-analysisYesApproved in the United States, Europe, and JapanNo CRC-incidence/mortality data yet, slight increase in withdrawal time and non-neoplastic resections
Gastric neoplasia detection/characterization (CADe/CADx)[34,36-44]Screening/surveillance endoscopyEndoscopistProspective single/multicenter, including 2 single-center RCTsYesApproved in JapanSingle-center RCTs, generalizability unclear
Colorectal polyp optical diagnosis (CADx, resect-and-discard)[66,67]Screening colonoscopyEndoscopistMeta-analysisYesApproved in JapanModest incremental benefit over unassisted diagnosis
IBD endoscopic/histologic activity assessment (PICaSSO/PHRI)[71-75]IBD surveillance colonoscopy and pathologyEndoscopist, pathologistMulticenter prospectiveYesAI-assisted assessment of inflammatory activity in UC during colonoscopy approved in Europe and JapanNot yet linked to hard outcomes (relapse, colectomy)
Esophageal cancer detection, staging and prognosis[20-24]Screening and surveillance endoscopyEndoscopist, including non-expertsProspective multicenter, international multicenter CADe studyYesApproved in JapanLesion-margin delineation remains difficult, survival models validated only in geographically restricted cohorts
CE lesion detection[46-53,55]Small bowel diagnostic work-upGastroenterologistMixed retrospective/prospective, meta-analysisYesApproved in United StatesReading-time benefit not yet linked to patient outcomes
Barrett’s esophagus detection[21,23]Screening and surveillance endoscopyEndoscopistRetrospective/model development and validation studyYesApproved in EuropeLimited explainability
Liver fibrosis staging, lesion characterization and hepatitis-subtype classification[107-113,116-119]Hepatology outpatient/radiologyHepatologist, radiologistRetrospective, some multicenter YesNot approvedPerformance decline on external validation, some reclassifications lack an absolute ground truth
Pancreatic cancer detection (radiomics, EHR-based risk models)[82-85]Radiology/population risk stratificationRadiologistMulti-institutional retrospective plus prospective validationYesNot approvedNo survival/patient-outcome data yet, low pretest prevalence limits real-world PPV
Biliary/ERCP-related AI (stone prediction, stricture characterization, PEP prediction)[95-102,104]ERCP/cholangioscopyEndoscopistRetrospective single/multicenterYesNot approvedLow PPV for PEP prediction, models built largely on trial-derived data
Table 9 Artificial intelligence systems approved for clinical use in gastroenterology
AI system name
Company
Clinical use
Regulatory authority ID
Japan - PMDA/MHLW
EndoBRAINCybernet Systems Ltd.CADx for differentiating neoplastic and non-neoplastic colorectal lesions using magnified endoscopyPMDA: 23000BZX00372000
EndoBRAIN-EYECybernet Systems Ltd.CADe for detecting colorectal lesions during colonoscopyPMDA: 30200BZX00208000
EndoBRAIN-UCCybernet Systems Ltd.AI-assisted assessment of inflammatory activity in UCPMDA: 30200BZX00136000
EndoBRAIN-PlusCybernet Systems Ltd.CADx for predicting histological category of colorectal lesionsPMDA: 30200BZX00235000
CAD EYE (EW10-EC02)Fujifilm CorporationCADe/CADx for colorectal lesion detection and neoplastic/non-neoplastic differentiationPMDA: 30200BZX00288000
CAD EYE (EW10-EG01)Fujifilm CorporationCADe for suspected esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and gastric neoplastic lesionsPMDA: 30400BZX00217000
EIRL Colon PolypLPIXEL Inc.CADe for detecting colorectal polypsPMDA: 30400BZX00259000
EndoBRAIN-XCybernet Systems Ltd.CADx for differentiating colorectal neoplastic and non-neoplastic lesions using NBIPMDA: 30500BZX00007000
gastroAI model-G2AI Medical Service Co., Ltd.CADe for detecting suspicious areas for early gastric cancer and adenomaPMDA: 30600BZX00266000
United States-FDA
GI Genius™Cosmo Artificial Intelligence - AI Ltd.AI-assisted real-time detection of colorectal polyps and other mucosal lesionsFDA: K241887
EndoScreenerChengdu Wision Medical Device Co., Ltd.AI-assisted real-time detection of colorectal polypsFDA: K211326
SKOUT® systemIterative HealthAI-assisted real-time detection and localization of colorectal polypsFDA: K253664
CAD EYE (EW10-EC02)Fujifilm CorporationAI-assisted detection of colorectal lesion candidatesFDA: K230751
NaviCam ProScanAnkon Technologies Co., Ltd.AI-assisted analysis of CE images for GI lesion detectionFDA: DEN230027
MAGENTIQ-COLOMagentiq Eye Ltd.CADe for real-time detection of colorectal lesionsFDA: K252178
CADDIEOdin Medical LimitedAI-assisted detection of suspected colorectal polypsFDA: K252586
Gastric AlimetryAlimetry Ltd.Analysis of gastric myoelectrical activity to aid diagnosis of gastric disordersFDA: K252504
Deep Capsule®Digestaid - Artificial Intelligence Development SAAI-assisted analysis of CE videos for GI lesion detectionFDA: K250655
European Union - EUDAMED/EU MDR
CADDIEOdin Medical LimitedAI-assisted detection of colorectal polypsBasic UDI-DI: B-15065010840000
CADUOdin Medical LimitedAI-assisted detection/characterization of dysplasia in Barrett’s esophagusBasic UDI-DI: B-15065010840017
SMARTIBDOdin Medical LimitedAI-assisted assessment of inflammatory activity in UC during colonoscopyBasic UDI-DI: 5065010840OD04PF
GI Genius™ softwareLINKVERSE S.R.L.AI-assisted real-time detection of colorectal polypsBasic UDI-DI: 8055060115WDCBB


Write to the Help Desk