Copyright: ©Author(s) 2026.
Artif Intell Gastroenterol. Nov 8, 2026; 7(3): 125000
Published online Nov 8, 2026. doi: 10.35712/aig.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 discrimination | QUID questionnaire (clinical/symptom data) | ANN, TWIST evolutionary algorithm | 577 patients, 94 controls | Prospective, multicenter (60 centers), resampling-based training, testing, and validation | Accuracy: 99.2% for GERD vs controls, 66.5% for EE vs NERD | Poor discrimination between EE and NERD |
| Huang et al[11] | GERD diagnosis | Endoscopic images of esophagogastric junction | HHDF-SVM | 39 patients, 108 controls | Diagnostic accuracy study, single-center, 10-fold cross-validation | Accuracy: 93.2%, sensitivity: 94.9%, performance exceeded inexperienced endoscopists | Small sample size, no automated LA grading |
| Wang et al[9] | LA classification of GERD | Conventional and NBI endoscopic images | GERD-VGGNet | 496 patients, 464 development cohort, 32 external test cohort | Retrospective, single-center, 10-fold cross-validation, external test set | NBI accuracy: 99.2% internally, 87.5% external testing, external test accuracy exceeded young trainee endoscopists | Small external test set, overfitting without augmentation |
| Yen et al[10] | LA classification of GERD | NBI endoscopic images | GERD-VGGNet features, random forest | 671 development images, 32 test images | Retrospective, single-center, 10-fold cross-validation, independent test set | Accuracy: 98.4% internally, 92.5% independent testing | Retrospective design, small independent test set |
| Ge et al[12] | Hill classification of gastroesophageal flap valve | RGB endoscopic images | ResNet-50, dual attention (EDA + SE) | 3256 images, 2589 for training, 334 for validation, 333 for test | Retrospective, single-center, training, validation, and independent test sets | Accuracy: 93.39%, AUC: 0.989 | Single-center, reduced performance for adjacent categories (Hill II vs III) |
| Rogers et al[13] | Automated baseline impedance and reflux assessment | pH-impedance monitoring data | Decision tree analysis | 325 individuals, 117 symptomatic off-PPI, 93 symptomatic on-PPI, 115 controls | Exploratory observational cohort, multicenter, comparison with manual reference standards | Event identification accuracy: 88.5%, AUC: 0.766 for treatment-response prediction, calibration: regression agreement with manual MNBI, r2 = 0.79-0.86 | Proof-of-concept, excluded very low baseline impedance cases |
| Zhou et al[14] | Reflux event identification | 24-hour pH-impedance monitoring | Structured State Space (S4) model | 45 patients, 25 for training, 20 for test | Retrospective, single-center, training, validation, and independent test sets | AUC: 0.87 (95%CI: 0.85-0.89), specificity: 80.8%, threshold calibrated to expert false-positive rate | Small sample size, relatively limited sensitivity |
| Wong et al[15] | Reflux episodes and PSPW index assessment | 24-hour impedance-pH monitoring | Deep residual network (ResNet) | 106 patients | Retrospective analysis, single-center, validation against manual Wingate criteria | Accuracy: 87% for reflux episodes, 82% for PSPW index, calibration: manual Wingate criteria used as reference standard | Clinical adjunct, manual analysis remains necessary |
| Rosenfeld et al[16] | BE detection/risk prediction | Questionnaire (symptoms/risk factors) | Logistic regression with IG and CFS feature selection | 1299 (BEST2/training and internal validation), 398 (BOOST/external validation) | Case-control, multicenter, internal split-sample, external independent cohort | Training 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 assessed | Case-control enrichment may overestimate performance, requires prospective primary-care validation |
| Iyer et al[17] | BE and EAC prediction | EHRs | Ensemble transformer-based ML model | 8476 BE cases, 1539 EAC cases, 252276 controls | Retrospective cohort, multicenter, 10% model holdout set | AUROC: 0.84 for both BE and EAC | Limited explainability, requires validation outside Mayo Clinic EHR systems |
| Berman et al[18] | BE segment length prediction | Digitized whole-slide images (Cytosponge-TFF3) | CNN for tile identification, logistic regression | 529 (BEST2), 158 (BEST3) | Case-control, RCT evaluation, multicenter, 5-fold cross-validation, independent RCT cohort | Internal 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 images | Ensemble deep learning (YOLO, ResNet101) | 542 patients, 70% for training, 20% for validation, 10% for test | Retrospective validation, random 70/20/10 train/validation/test split | LGD sensitivity: 81.3%, specificity: 100%, NDBE/HGD > 90%, F1-score: 0.90-1.0 | Pilot-scale validation, real-world community pathology performance unknown |
| Gao et al[20] | ESCC and esophagogastric junction adenocarcinoma risk prediction | 105 cytological, 15 epidemiological features | Automated ML-based prediction tool | 17498 eligible participants | Nationwide, multicohort, prospective, multicenter (39 hospitals), internal testing, community-based validation | Internal 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 participants | Primarily focused on resource optimization for endoscopy in China |
| Fockens et al[21] | Detection of early Barrett’s neoplasia | White-light endoscopic images and videos | EfficientNet-Lite1 encoder, MobileNetV2 DeepLabV3+ decoder | 14046 images from 2506 patients for training | Model development and validation, multicenter (15 international centers), all-comers and enriched benchmarking test sets | Sensitivity: 95% (95%CI: 88%-98%) for images, 97% (95%CI: 90%-99%) for videos in all-comers set | Training relied on high-quality expert images, subtle neoplastic lesions were scarce |
| Yuan et al[22] | Detection and delineation of superficial ESCC and precancerous lesions | Non-magnified NBI | AI-based detection and delineation system | 10047 still images and 140 videos (1112 patients) | Multicenter development and validation, multicenter (4 hospitals), internal/external image test sets and prospective clinical evaluation | Accuracy: 92.4% internal, 89.9% external, 91.4% prospective | Accurate delineation of lesion margins remains a key clinical challenge |
| Chempak Kumar et al[23] | Classification and staging of ESCC, EAC, and BE | Endoscopic images | Multi-CNN (Xception, MobileNetV2, GoogLeNet, Darknet53), ABC optimization, SVM | 1028 images (523 BE, 217 ESCC, 288 EAC) | CAD network development, single-center, 3-fold cross-validation | Overall classification accuracy: 97.76% | Relatively small dataset |
| Lu et al[24] | Prognostic prediction in ESCC | 27 clinical and laboratory blood parameters | Random survival forest | 2521 consecutive patients, 1765 for training and 756 for test | Retrospective, single-center, 70% training/30% test split | C-index: 0.746, 5-year AUC: 0.771 | Single-region cohort, retrospective design limits generalizability |
| Popa et al[25] | Classification of esophageal motility disorders | Single wet-swallow raw HREM images | DL (CNN, Inception V3) | 157 patients (1570 images), 70% training, 15% testing, 15% validation | Retrospective, single-center, 70% training/15% testing/15% validation | Overall 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 achalasia | Demographic data, disease duration, HRM, esophagography | ML clustering and predictive models | 1824 treatment-naïve patients including 1778 undergoing POEM | Multicenter cohort, model development for risk stratification | AUC: 0.70 for persistent symptoms, 0.61 for reflux esophagitis | Weak predictive performance for post-POEM reflux esophagitis |
| Carlson et al[27] | Classification of achalasia subtypes using FLIP panometry | FLIP panometry | Supervised ML (decision trees) | 180 adult patients | Retrospective analysis of a prospective cohort, single-center, 140 training/40 test cohort | Spastic 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 detection | Endoscopic images and videos | ENDOANGEL-GEV (U-Net++, DCNN, DBSCAN) | 1156 training patients, 161 prospective patients | Multicenter retrospective with prospective observational, internal, multicenter video, and prospective validation | EV 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 patients | Single-arm design, potential bias from high proportion of severe Child-Pugh C cases |
| Chen et al[29] | GEV detection and classification | Endoscopic images and videos | ENDOANGEL (DCNN) | 6189 patients with 14718 images | Multicenter retrospective, independent image and multicenter video validation | EV 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 bleeding | Endoscopic images | DL (transfer learning with EfficientNet) | 1075 images (675 training/validation, 400 test) | Multicenter retrospective cohort, internal and external validation | EfficientNet accuracy: 0.893, recall: 0.870 | Reliance on single endoscopic images rather than multiple views or clinical data |
| Wang et al[31] | Prediction of 12-month EV bleeding | Endoscopic images and clinical structured data | MMML stacking model (EfficientNet + 6 algorithms) | 341 patients, 161 patients in the external test cohort | Multicenter retrospective cohort, internal validation and external testing | AUC: 0.975, sensitivity: 0.952 | No 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 infection | Endoscopic images (WLI) | 22-layer deep CNN with GoogLeNet | 32208 images (development), 11481 images from 397 patients (test) | Retrospective, single-center, independent test set comparison | Accuracy: 87.7%, 11481 images analyzed in approximately 3.2 minutes vs approximately 230 minutes by endoscopists | Single-center study |
| Liu et al[35] | Kyoto gastritis classification | Gastric endoscopy images (WLI and NBI) | Five GAM-EfficientNet models | 29013 images from 2087 patients, test set of 528 images, compared with 10 endoscopists | Retrospective, single-center, internal training, validation, and testing sets | Average accuracy: 78.70% | Single-center study, imbalanced sample distribution, lack of paired histological validation |
| Hirasawa et al[36] | Gastric cancer detection | Endoscopic images (WLI, chromoendoscopy and NBI) | CNN with Single Shot MultiBox Detector | 13584 training images, 2296 test images | Retrospective, multicenter training, independent test set of consecutive patients | Sensitivity: 92.2%, detected 100% of invasive cancers and 98.6% of lesions ≥ 6 mm, processed 2296 images in 47 seconds | Test set included only cancer cases with high disease prevalence, single endoscope type used |
| Ikenoyama et al[37] | Early gastric cancer detection | Endoscopic images (WLI) | CNN with Single Shot MultiBox Detector | 13584 training images, 2940 test images | Retrospective multicenter training, single-center test set, independent comparison with 67 endoscopists | Sensitivity: 58.4% (95%CI: 51.4%-65.1%) in independent external test set, reading time 45.5 seconds vs 173 minutes for endoscopists | Test set limited to a single center and still images, low PPV of 26.0% |
| Luo et al[38] | Esophageal and gastric cancer detection | Endoscopy images (WLI) | Deep learning with GRAIDS | 1036496 images from 84424 individuals | Multicenter case-control diagnostic study, internal, prospective, and external validation | Accuracy: 0.915-0.977 (external validation sets) | Only standard WLIs were used |
| Zhang et al[40] | Early gastric cancer detection | Gastroscopic images | Improved Mask R-CNN | 1120 images of EGC (140 healthy, 980 EGC cases) | Retrospective, single-center, fivefold cross-validation and testing dataset | Accuracy: 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 neoplasms | WLI endoscopic images | Automated DL | 2899 training images, 1597 prospective test images | Multicenter validation, training from one hospital and testing at another, prospective multicenter external test | Accuracy: 89.3% (95%CI: 85.1%-93.5%) (external validation), AI-assisted trainee accuracy 81.6% vs 68.4% without AI | Training images from a single institution |
| Gong et al[42] | Gastric neoplasm detection and classification | Real-time endoscopy | DL clinical decision support system | 5017 training images, 2524 pilot procedures | Randomized pilot study and prospective multicenter external test | Classification accuracy: 81.5% (prospective multicenter external test) | Improvement in real-time lesion detection rate was not statistically significant |
| Wu et al[43] | Gastric neoplasm detection | Real-time white-light endoscopy | DL system | 1812 patients | Single-center tandem RCT | Miss rate: 6.1% with AI vs 27.3% with routine examination | Single-center design, endoscopists were not blinded to randomization |
| Xu et al[44] | Detection of precancerous lesions and adenomas | Digestive endoscopy | ENDOANGEL | Prospective intervention phases | Prospective, randomized, single-center clinical trial | IM 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 mapping | High-resolution gastric myoelectrical activity data from BSGM | Automated artifact detection and rejection algorithm with signal recovery | 10 patients, 176 data samples | Prospective validation study, single-center | Accuracy: 95%, sensitivity: 96%, specificity: 95% against expert markers | Small 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 lesions | CE images for training and videos for testing | Deep CNN | 66028 images for training, 379 small-bowel videos for testing | Multicenter retrospective, independent test set of consecutive videos from 3 institutions, external validation | Per-patient detection rate: 99%, sensitivity for mucosal breaks 100% (95%CI: 88.4%-100%) and bleeding 100%, substantially reduced reading workload compared with conventional method | Per-patient assessment may not reflect detection of every individual small lesion |
| Ding et al[48] | Detection of various small intestinal mucosal lesions | SB-CE images and videos | ResNet-based CNN auxiliary model | Training: 158235 images/1970 patients, validation: 113426569 images/5000 patients | Multicenter retrospective, 77 medical centers, comparison of conventional and AI-assisted reading in 5000 patients, internal validation | Sensitivity: 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 detection | Clinical patient video data | Multi-scale curvelet analysis and fractal technology with SVM | 89 clinical patients | Retrospective, single-center context, feature extraction and classification testing on clinical video frames, internal validation | Sensitivity: 97.8%, specificity: 96.7% | Small dataset of only 89 patients |
| Leenhardt et al[50] | Detection of gastrointestinal angiectasia | SB-CE still frames | CNN with semantic segmentation | 6360 frames from 4166 CE videos, 600-frame independent test set | Multicenter retrospective using a national database, two separate datasets for ML and algorithm testing, internal validation | Sensitivity: 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 lesions | Multi-brand and multi-device CE frames | RegNetY-based CNN | 34655 frames from 1188 examinations | Multicenter retrospective cohort study, 5-fold cross-validation and independent exam-split test set | Sensitivity: 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 CD | Pan-enteric CE videos | AXARO® DL platform | 131 patients with suspected CD | Multicenter prospective, blinded trial, prospective external validation | Sensitivity: 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 review | Relatively small patient cohort |
| Scheppach et al[54] | Detection of duodenal villous atrophy | Endoscopic still images | ResNet18 DL model | 1704 images for internal validation, 349 images for external validation | Multicenter retrospective case-control, internal cross-validation and independent external test set | Sensitivity: 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 atrophy | CE images | Linear SVM with image-processing kernels and filters | 109 films, 100 frames per film, 51-film test set | Retrospective, single-center, comparison of Linear SVM, Fine KNN, and Weighted KNN, internal validation | Accuracy: 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 disease | Whole-slide images of IHC sections | DenseNet2 CNN classifiers | 116 small-intestine biopsies, matched cohort of 28 patient pairs | Single-center retrospective pilot study, internal validation | More than 90% concordance with manual scores in matched biopsies | Small pilot study, manual selection of tissue by a pathologist remains necessary |
| Malagelada et al[58] | Identification of intestinal motor dysfunction | CE images | SVM | 36 patients and 50 healthy subjects | Single-center prospective pilot study, leave-one-out cross-validation | 100% identification of patients meeting manometric criteria for dysmotility | Complexity of parameters analyzed requires a much larger validation dataset |
| Cheng et al[59] | Detection of high-grade small-bowel obstruction | Abdominal radiographs | Inception-v3 CNN | 7768 radiographs from 3212 patients, held-out test set of 2420 consecutive radiographs | Single-center retrospective study, two-stage training and evaluation on a held-out test set, internal validation | Sensitivity: 91.4%, specificity: 91.9%, ROC AUC: 0.971 | Retrospective 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 detection | Colonoscopy videos | Convolutional 3D neural network | 73 patients, learning set: 411 short videos/59 patients, independent test set: 135 short videos/14 patients | Single-center retrospective, independent test set, internal validation | Sensitivity 90.0%, specificity 63.3% | High false-positive rate (60%) in polyp-based analysis |
| Wang et al[63] | Polyp and adenoma detection | Real-time colonoscopy video stream | DL with SegNet-based DCNN | 1058 patients, 522 CADe vs 536 control | Single-center RCT | ADR 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 quality | Real-time colonoscopy videos | ENDOANGEL with DCNNs and perceptual hash algorithms | 704 patients (355 ENDOANGEL vs 349 control) | Single-center RCT | ADR 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 detection | Real-time colonoscopy images | DL with GI-Genius | 685 subjects (341 CADe vs 344 control), AI training set: 2684 polyps from 840 patients | Multicenter RCT | ADR 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 detection | Routine real-time colonoscopy | Real-time CADe with GI Genius 2.0.2 | 2015 participants (1003 CADe vs 1012 control) | Single-center RCT | ADR 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 polyp | Unaltered NBI colonoscopy video frames | DCNN with Inception | 125 diminutive polyps | Retrospective single-center expert-operator videos, independent test set, internal validation | Accuracy 94% (95%CI: 86-97), sensitivity 98% (95%CI: 92-100) for adenomas | Videos collected by a single expert operator, not tested on live patients |
| Kather et al[68] | Microsatellite instability prediction | H&E-stained histology slides | Deep residual learning with ResNet18 | Various cohorts (discovery: 1380, external: 378) | Multicenter discovery and validation, external validation | Patient-level AUC 0.84 (95%CI: 0.72-0.92) for colorectal cancer | Performance may not generalize beyond cancer types or ethnicities represented in training |
| Echle et al[69] | Microsatellite instability prediction | Routine H&E histology slides | Modified ShuffleNet DL | 8836 colorectal tumors, 6406 development, 771 external resection validation | International multicenter retrospective, external validation | AUROC 0.96 for dMMR | Performance significantly lower in small biopsy samples than resections |
| Skrede et al[70] | Colorectal cancer prognosis | Scanned conventional H&E sections | Integration of 10 CNNs | 2473 training and tuning, 2042 validation data | Retrospective discovery and validation, independent external validation | Hazard ratio 3.84 (95%CI: 2.72-5.43; P < 0.0001) for poor vs good prognosis | Retrospective cohorts, clinical utility requires prospective evaluation |
| Mossotto et al[71] | Pediatric IBD classification, CD, UC and IBDU | Endoscopic and histological findings from 10 GI locations | Linear SVM with RFE-CV | 287 children, 239-patient model development/testing cohort and independent validation of 48 patients | Retrospective single-center, internal and independent validation | Accuracy 82.7% combined model, 83.3% independent validation, IBDU cases were reclassified as CD or UC with > 80% posterior probability | Less accurate for UC (65%) than CD (94%) |
| Ozawa et al[72] | UC endoscopic activity assessment | Colonoscopy images | CNN with GoogLeNet | 26304 images from 841 patients for training, 3981 images from 114 patients for testing | Retrospective image analysis, internal, independent image test set validation | AUROC 0.86 for Mayo 0 and 0.98 for Mayo 0-1 | Performance varied by location, lower accuracy in right and left colon than rectum |
| Maeda et al[73] | UC histologic activity assessment | Endocytoscopy images at 520 × ultra-magnification | SVM using 312 extracted texture features | 22835 images from 187 patients, training 12900 images/87 patients, validation 9935 images from 100 patients | Retrospective validation, single-center, temporal training and validation split, internal validation | Accuracy 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 assessment | Histological whole-slide images | CNN | 138 biopsies from 307 patients | Prospective multicenter, 11 centers, 70% training and 30% testing, internal validation | Accuracy 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 colitis | Longitudinal laboratory data and demographics from EMR | Random forest | 20368 patients | Retrospective cohort, National VHA database, temporal 70% training and 30% testing split, internal validation | AUROC 0.85 (95%CI: 0.84-0.85) to 0.87 (95%CI: 0.87-0.88) depending on model | Older predominantly male population may limit generalizability |
| Waljee et al[77] | CD outcome prediction | Demographic and laboratory data from clinical trials | Random forest | 401 participants, repeated 70/30 training-testing splits | Cohort study of three phase 3 RCTs, repeated 70% and 30% training and testing splits, internal validation | AUROC 0.78 (95%CI: 0.69-0.87) for week-8 model | CRP is an imperfect proxy for remission |
| Das et al[78] | Acute lower gastrointestinal bleeding risk prediction | Non-endoscopic clinical variables | ANN | 332 patients, 120 training, 70 internal validation, 142 external validation | Prospectively collected validation study, multicenter, internal and independent external validation | Accuracy 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 prediction | Non-endoscopic variables | Gradient boosting | 300 patients, 170 for training and internal validation, 130 for external validation | Retrospective database study, multicenter, internal and independent external validation | Accuracy 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 prediction | EMR data | Gradient boosting | 4997 visits, 3154 for internal validation, 1343 for external validation | Multicenter retrospective cohort, internal and held-out external validation | AUC 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 diagnosis | Fecal gut microbiome profiles using 16S rRNA and short-chain fatty acids | Random forest using LASSO feature extraction | 111, 85 IBS patients and 26 healthy controls | Prospective diagnostic study, multicenter secondary and tertiary care clinics, internal repeated 10-fold cross-validation | AUC 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 prediction | Prediagnostic CT scans | SVM | 420 CT scans, 155 prediagnostic, 265 controls | Retrospective case-control, internal test set, independent internal and external NIH sets, internal and external validation | AUC 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 prediction | Standard-of-care CT scans | Ensemble with logistic regression, random forest, and XGBoost | 1462 scans, 969 training and 493 test | Retrospective, multicenter, independent test set and external specificity validation cohorts | AUC 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 detection | Routine CT scans | DL | 3440 patients, 2224 for training, 86 for tuning, 1130 for sequestered test, multi-reader substudy of 391 cases assessed by 68 radiologists | International multicenter observational study, sequestered testing cohort and radiologist subset | Mean 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 prediction | Health records with ICD codes | Transformer and GRU | 9.2 million patients from DNPR and US-VA | Retrospective cohort, random 10% test split and cross-application between health systems, internal and cross-validation | AUROC 0.88 in Denmark and 0.78 in US-VA (internal validation), Danish model on US-VA dataset yielded AUROC 0.71 | Performance declined when applied across different healthcare systems |
| Kuwahara et al[88] | IPMN classification | EUS digital still images | DL with ResNet50 | 50 patients, 3970 images | Retrospective single-center, 10-fold cross-validation | Accuracy 94.0%, AUC 0.98, diagnostic accuracy 94.0% vs 56.0% for human preoperative diagnosis | Small sample size, retrospective design, only surgical cases included |
| Kurita et al[89] | Pancreatic cystic lesion classification | Cyst fluid markers and clinical data | DL with TensorFlow | 85 patients | Retrospective, single-center, observational study, 5-fold cross-validation | AUROC 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 classification | nCLE video frames | CNN | 35 patients, 15027 frames | Post hoc analysis of a prospective multicenter cohort, performance on post hoc video data, internal validation | Accuracy 82.9%-85.7%, sensitivity 83.3% | Small patient cohort, limited to pathologically confirmed cases |
| Yuan et al[91] | Pancreatic cystic neoplasm malignancy prediction | Contrast-enhanced CT scans | Mamba U-Net and XGBoost | 1835 patients, 1249 primary cohort (999 training, 250 validation), external test sets of 173, 289 and 124 patients | Multicenter retrospective and prospective study, external test sets and prospective real-world cohort, internal and external validation | AUC 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 classification | Abdominal CT scans | Attention Gate U-Net | 335 abdominal CT scans, 297 pancreatic cystic lesions and 38 controls, training 241 scans/93 patients, independent test 94 scans/43 patients | Retrospective single-center, independent testing set of 94 scans, internal validation | Sensitivity 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 prediction | Preoperative clinical predictors | ModelArts | 1199 patients | Retrospective, single-center, internal validation | Accuracy 0.97, recall 0.97, precision 0.971 | Retrospective design may limit generalizability to real-world settings |
| Sugimoto et al[96] | Distal bile duct obstruction, benign vs malignant | Clinical laboratory biomarkers | LightGBM | 206 patients, 64 malignant, 142 benign, 16 excluded for missing values | Retrospective, single-center, internal validation with 10-fold cross-validation | AUROC 0.908, sensitivity 83.1%, specificity 87.2%, AUROC significantly higher than individual biomarkers | Small sample size, exclusion of markers such as CA19-9 because of missing data |
| Saraiva et al[99] | Biliary stricture, benign vs malignant | Digital single-operator cholangioscopy images | CNN | 85 patients, 11855 images | Retrospective pilot study, single-center, internal validation with 5-fold cross-validation | Accuracy 94.9%, sensitivity 94.7%, specificity 92.1%, AUC 0.988 | Small patient cohort, static images rather than full videos |
| Saraiva et al[100] | Malignant biliary stricture and morphologic characterization | Digital single-operator cholangioscopy images | ResNet-based CNN | 129 DSOC examinations, 84994 images | Retrospective, multicenter, internal validation | Overall accuracy 82.9%, AUROC 0.92, tumor vessel detection AUC 0.98, papillary projection detection AUC 0.96 | Tested on a single DSOC platform, technological maturity remains preclinical |
| Brenner et al[101] | Post-ERCP pancreatitis prediction | Patient-level data from 12 RCTs | Gradient-boosted machine | 7389 patients for development, 135 patients for pilot | Retrospective development and prospective pilot, multicenter development and single-center pilot, internal and prospective validation | AUC 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 prediction | Clinical preprocedural and procedural factors | Gradient boosting | 1150 patients | Prospective multicenter international cohort, proof-of-concept, internal validation | AUC 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 obstruction | Clinical laboratory and procedural data | XGBoost | 1421 patients, derivation cohort 1026 (718 training, 308 testing), external validation 395 | Retrospective, multicenter, internal and external validation | AUC 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 prediction | Papilla radiomics from endoscopic images and clinical data | DL and ML algorithms | 2372 patients | Retrospective multicohort, multicenter, internal validation | AUC 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 prediction | Endoscopic images | CNN with U-Net and ResNet | 531 patients for difficulty, 451 for detection | Retrospective, multicenter, internal validation with 5-fold cross-validation | mIoU 64.1% for detection, recall 61.1% for difficult cases | Low 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 assessment | Demographic and clinical features | Random forest, logistic regression, and ANN | 1370 patients, training 1096 and testing 274 | Multicenter cohort, internal validation | AUC 0.89 for cirrhosis | Requires further clinical validation for widespread use |
| Preechathammawong et al[107] | NAFLD fibrosis and steatosis assessment | Digital histopathological images, H&E biopsy | SMART AI-PATHO, DL algorithms | 146 hepatic tissue specimens | Cross-sectional analytic, multicenter observational, comparison with pathologist interpretations | Agreement 68.4%, kappa 0.59 for all staging, 89.7% agreement for advanced fibrosis | Cannot assess lobular inflammation, ballooning, or variations in staining techniques |
| Zheng et al[108] | Liver fibrosis staging | Portal venous CT imaging | DRCDS, DL segmentation and classification with decision model | 819 patients in the development set and 175 patients in external test sets | Retrospective multicenter study, internal test set and 3 external test sets | AUC 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 specificity | Retrospective design, potential sampling errors in the biopsy reference standard |
| Xue et al[109] | Liver fibrosis assessment | Grayscale and elastogram ultrasound images | Transfer learning with Inception-V3 | 466 patients undergoing partial hepatectomy, training 364 and test 102 | Retrospective diagnostic study, single-center, random-split internal test set | AUC 0.950 (95%CI: 0.917-0.972) for Scheuer stage S4 | Uneven distribution of fibrosis stages |
| Ai et al[110] | Liver fibrosis assessment | Ultrasound radiofrequency signals and B-mode images | 2D CNN for ROI analysis and 1D CNN for classification | 613 participants for ROI, 237 participants for classification | Feasibility study, single-center, internal test sets | AUC 0.957 for ≥ METAVIR F1 (phase-spectrum test set) | Limited sample size and single-scanner diversity |
| Zha et al[111] | Liver fibrosis assessment | MRI and clinical variables | ResUNet for segmentation and CoRC logistic regression model | 595 patients with biopsy-proven liver fibrosis | Retrospective multicenter cohort, internal and external validation | AUC 0.79-0.82 (internal and external test sets) | Retrospective study design |
| Wang et al[112] | Liver fibrosis in HBV | 2D shear-wave elastography | DL radiomics with CNN | 398 patients, training 266 and validation 132 | Prospective multicenter study, internal and hospital-cross validation | AUC 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 characterization | Multiphase enhanced CT imaging | Liver Lesion Network | 4039 patients | Multicenter development study, external-center validation, and clinical verification | AUC 97.2% for benign vs malignant lesions (external centers) | Primarily intended to aid areas with limited radiologist availability |
| Sharma et al[114] | Hepatitis C detection | Standard biochemical blood parameters | Stacked meta-model with random forest and XGBoost, with pre-clustering | 869 patients | Hybrid dataset from NHANES and UCI, multi-source, holdout validation | Accuracy 94.82% (holdout set) | Lacks validation on real-world datasets |
| Ercan et al[115] | Autoimmune hepatitis assessment | H&E and Sirius red biopsy slides | CNN pipeline for segmentation and detection | 123 pairs of biopsy slides (H&E and Sirius red) from 116 patients | Diagnostic tool development, single-center, independent 20% test set | Accuracy 99.4% for tissue detection (test set) | Relies solely on images without clinical data |
| Gerussi et al[116] | Autoimmune hepatitis vs primary biliary cholangitis | H&E digitized biopsy slides | Transformer-based attention-based multiple instance learning with ALNE | 446 patients providing a dataset of 561 digitized whole-slide images | Multicenter diagnostic study, internal cross-validation and external validation | AUC 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 disease | Fecal 16S rRNA sequencing data | CNN with principal component analysis | 674 subjects (464 for internal validation and 210 for external validation) | Multicenter screening signature development, internal cross-validation and external validation | AUC > 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 hepatitis | 24 routine laboratory parameters | Gradient boosting decision tree | 2554 patients | Multicenter cohort, external and prospective validation | AUROC 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-cholangiocarcinoma | H&E whole-slide images | Self-supervised ResNet50 with attention-based multiple instance learning | 1356 cases | Multicenter phenotyping and reclassification study, internal cross-validation and external TCGA validation | AUROC 0.94 (external TCGA validation) | No ground truth for biphenotypic reclassification |
| Huang et al[120] | Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis | 44 clinical variables and 250 serum metabolites | Multi-step ML | 616 patients (311 in the derivation cohort and 305 in the validation cohort) | Multicenter development study across different countries, external validation in Finnish cohort | AUROC 0.87 (derivation cohort) | Requires serum metabolite measurements by NMR |
| Guo et al[121] | Prediction of cirrhosis complications | 168 circulating metabolites and clinical variables | Integrated nomogram | 64005 participants from the UK Biobank, training 43734, validation 20271 | Multicenter UK Biobank tool-development study, internal and prospective evaluation | AUC 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 disease | Demographic, clinical and laboratory data | XGBoost with SHAP | 5281 subjects from the NHANES database | Multicenter observational national survey, internal holdout validation | AUC 0.95 (95%CI: 0.91-0.97) (holdout test set) | Lacked liver biopsy data for comparison |
| Kim et al[123] | Prediction of hepatic decompensation | MRE stiffness and clinical variables | Multivariable Cox regression | 1254 participants with NAFLD from an international cohort | Multicenter cohort, internal random-split validation | C-statistic 0.876 for 5-year risk (validation cohort) | Requires MRE and has retrospective design |
| Nakatsuka et al[124] | HCC prediction in steatotic liver disease | H&E whole-slide images | CNN with EfficientNetB0 | 685 patients | Retrospective multicenter prediction study, external validation using nonpaired cases | AUC 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 prediction | Gene expression profiles using secreted genes and relative expression ordering | Hybrid model with relative expression ordering, feature selection, and SVM | 5586 tissue samples | ML signature development using public databases, independent validation sets | Accuracy 98.34% (independent validation) | Primarily based on public databases |
| Sharma et al[126] | Graft injury after liver transplantation | Demographic, clinical and laboratory data | GraftIQ with multiclass neural network and data fusion | 5759 biopsies | Multicenter diagnostic study, internal test set and external validation | AUC 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 colonoscopy | Endoscopist | RCT meta-analysis | Yes | Approved in the United States, Europe, and Japan | No 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 endoscopy | Endoscopist | Prospective single/multicenter, including 2 single-center RCTs | Yes | Approved in Japan | Single-center RCTs, generalizability unclear |
| Colorectal polyp optical diagnosis (CADx, resect-and-discard)[66,67] | Screening colonoscopy | Endoscopist | Meta-analysis | Yes | Approved in Japan | Modest incremental benefit over unassisted diagnosis |
| IBD endoscopic/histologic activity assessment (PICaSSO/PHRI)[71-75] | IBD surveillance colonoscopy and pathology | Endoscopist, pathologist | Multicenter prospective | Yes | AI-assisted assessment of inflammatory activity in UC during colonoscopy approved in Europe and Japan | Not yet linked to hard outcomes (relapse, colectomy) |
| Esophageal cancer detection, staging and prognosis[20-24] | Screening and surveillance endoscopy | Endoscopist, including non-experts | Prospective multicenter, international multicenter CADe study | Yes | Approved in Japan | Lesion-margin delineation remains difficult, survival models validated only in geographically restricted cohorts |
| CE lesion detection[46-53,55] | Small bowel diagnostic work-up | Gastroenterologist | Mixed retrospective/prospective, meta-analysis | Yes | Approved in United States | Reading-time benefit not yet linked to patient outcomes |
| Barrett’s esophagus detection[21,23] | Screening and surveillance endoscopy | Endoscopist | Retrospective/model development and validation study | Yes | Approved in Europe | Limited explainability |
| Liver fibrosis staging, lesion characterization and hepatitis-subtype classification[107-113,116-119] | Hepatology outpatient/radiology | Hepatologist, radiologist | Retrospective, some multicenter | Yes | Not approved | Performance decline on external validation, some reclassifications lack an absolute ground truth |
| Pancreatic cancer detection (radiomics, EHR-based risk models)[82-85] | Radiology/population risk stratification | Radiologist | Multi-institutional retrospective plus prospective validation | Yes | Not approved | No 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/cholangioscopy | Endoscopist | Retrospective single/multicenter | Yes | Not approved | Low 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 | |||
| EndoBRAIN | Cybernet Systems Ltd. | CADx for differentiating neoplastic and non-neoplastic colorectal lesions using magnified endoscopy | PMDA: 23000BZX00372000 |
| EndoBRAIN-EYE | Cybernet Systems Ltd. | CADe for detecting colorectal lesions during colonoscopy | PMDA: 30200BZX00208000 |
| EndoBRAIN-UC | Cybernet Systems Ltd. | AI-assisted assessment of inflammatory activity in UC | PMDA: 30200BZX00136000 |
| EndoBRAIN-Plus | Cybernet Systems Ltd. | CADx for predicting histological category of colorectal lesions | PMDA: 30200BZX00235000 |
| CAD EYE (EW10-EC02) | Fujifilm Corporation | CADe/CADx for colorectal lesion detection and neoplastic/non-neoplastic differentiation | PMDA: 30200BZX00288000 |
| CAD EYE (EW10-EG01) | Fujifilm Corporation | CADe for suspected esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and gastric neoplastic lesions | PMDA: 30400BZX00217000 |
| EIRL Colon Polyp | LPIXEL Inc. | CADe for detecting colorectal polyps | PMDA: 30400BZX00259000 |
| EndoBRAIN-X | Cybernet Systems Ltd. | CADx for differentiating colorectal neoplastic and non-neoplastic lesions using NBI | PMDA: 30500BZX00007000 |
| gastroAI model-G2 | AI Medical Service Co., Ltd. | CADe for detecting suspicious areas for early gastric cancer and adenoma | PMDA: 30600BZX00266000 |
| United States-FDA | |||
| GI Genius™ | Cosmo Artificial Intelligence - AI Ltd. | AI-assisted real-time detection of colorectal polyps and other mucosal lesions | FDA: K241887 |
| EndoScreener | Chengdu Wision Medical Device Co., Ltd. | AI-assisted real-time detection of colorectal polyps | FDA: K211326 |
| SKOUT® system | Iterative Health | AI-assisted real-time detection and localization of colorectal polyps | FDA: K253664 |
| CAD EYE (EW10-EC02) | Fujifilm Corporation | AI-assisted detection of colorectal lesion candidates | FDA: K230751 |
| NaviCam ProScan | Ankon Technologies Co., Ltd. | AI-assisted analysis of CE images for GI lesion detection | FDA: DEN230027 |
| MAGENTIQ-COLO | Magentiq Eye Ltd. | CADe for real-time detection of colorectal lesions | FDA: K252178 |
| CADDIE | Odin Medical Limited | AI-assisted detection of suspected colorectal polyps | FDA: K252586 |
| Gastric Alimetry | Alimetry Ltd. | Analysis of gastric myoelectrical activity to aid diagnosis of gastric disorders | FDA: K252504 |
| Deep Capsule® | Digestaid - Artificial Intelligence Development SA | AI-assisted analysis of CE videos for GI lesion detection | FDA: K250655 |
| European Union - EUDAMED/EU MDR | |||
| CADDIE | Odin Medical Limited | AI-assisted detection of colorectal polyps | Basic UDI-DI: B-15065010840000 |
| CADU | Odin Medical Limited | AI-assisted detection/characterization of dysplasia in Barrett’s esophagus | Basic UDI-DI: B-15065010840017 |
| SMARTIBD | Odin Medical Limited | AI-assisted assessment of inflammatory activity in UC during colonoscopy | Basic UDI-DI: 5065010840OD04PF |
| GI Genius™ software | LINKVERSE S.R.L. | AI-assisted real-time detection of colorectal polyps | Basic UDI-DI: 8055060115WDCBB |
- Citation: Roy SK, Samanta A, Banerjee A. Artificial intelligence in gastroenterology practice: Current perspectives and emerging prospects. Artif Intell Gastroenterol 2026; 7(3): 125000
- URL: https://www.wjgnet.com/2644-3236/full/v7/i3/125000.htm
- DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.35712/aig.125000