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A guide to artificial intelligence for cancer researchers

Nature Reviews Cancer volume 24, pages 427–441 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been commoditized. It has evolved from a specialty resource to a readily accessible tool for cancer researchers. AI-based tools can boost research productivity in daily workflows, but can also extract hidden information from existing data, thereby enabling new scientific discoveries. Building a basic literacy in these tools is useful for every cancer researcher. Researchers with a traditional biological science focus can use AI-based tools through off-the-shelf software, whereas those who are more computationally inclined can develop their own AI-based software pipelines. In this article, we provide a practical guide for non-computational cancer researchers to understand how AI-based tools can benefit them. We convey general principles of AI for applications in image analysis, natural language processing and drug discovery. In addition, we give examples of how non-computational researchers can get started on the journey to productively use AI in their own work.

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Fig. 1: AI workflows in cancer research.
Fig. 2: Development from simple, specialized, shallow models to deep, multimodal, generalist models for computer vision.
Fig. 3: Text-based hypothetical AI workflows in cancer research.

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Acknowledgements

R.P.-L. is supported by LaCaixa Foundation, a CRIS Foundation Talent Award (TALENT19-05), the FERO Foundation, the Instituto de Salud Carlos III-Investigacion en Salud (PI18/01395 and PI21/01019), the Prostate Cancer Foundation (18YOUN19) and the Asociación Española Contra el Cancer (AECC) (PRYCO211023SERR). J.N.K. is supported by the German Cancer Aid (DECADE, 70115166), the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (PEARL, 01KD2104C; CAMINO, 01EO2101; SWAG, 01KD2215A; TRANSFORM LIVER, 031L0312A; and TANGERINE, 01KT2302 through ERA-NET Transcan), the German Academic Exchange Service (SECAI, 57616814), the German Federal Joint Committee (TransplantKI, 01VSF21048), the European Union’s Horizon Europe and innovation programme (ODELIA, 101057091; and GENIAL, 101096312), the European Research Council (ERC; NADIR, 101114631) and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR; NIHR203331) Leeds Biomedical Research Centre. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care. This work was funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Radiomics Group, Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, Vall d’Hebron Barcelona Hospital Campus, Barcelona, Spain

    Raquel Perez-Lopez

  2. Else Kroener Fresenius Center for Digital Health, Technical University Dresden, Dresden, Germany

    Narmin Ghaffari Laleh & Jakob Nikolas Kather

  3. Department of Pathology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Faisal Mahmood

  4. Department of Pathology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Faisal Mahmood

  5. Cancer Program, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Faisal Mahmood

  6. Cancer Data Science Program, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA

    Faisal Mahmood

  7. Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Faisal Mahmood

  8. Harvard Data Science Initiative, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Faisal Mahmood

  9. Department of Medicine I, University Hospital Dresden, Dresden, Germany

    Jakob Nikolas Kather

  10. Medical Oncology, National Center for Tumour Diseases (NCT), University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

    Jakob Nikolas Kather

Authors
  1. Raquel Perez-Lopez
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  2. Narmin Ghaffari Laleh
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  3. Faisal Mahmood
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  4. Jakob Nikolas Kather
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Contributions

All authors contributed substantially to discussion of the content and reviewed and/or edited the manuscript before the submission. R.P.-L., N.G.L. and J.N.K. researched data for the article and wrote the article.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jakob Nikolas Kather.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

J.N.K. declares consulting services for Owkin, DoMore Diagnostics, Panakeia, Scailyte, Mindpeak and MultiplexDx; holds shares in StratifAI GmbH; has received a research grant from GSK; and has received honoraria from AstraZeneca, Bayer, Eisai, Janssen, MSD, BMS, Roche, Pfizer and Fresenius. R.P.-L. declares research funding by AstraZeneca and Roche, and participates in the steering committee of a clinical trial sponsored by Roche, not related to this work. All other authors declare no competing interests.

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Supplementary information

Glossary

Application programming interface

(API). A set of tools and protocols for building software and applications, enabling software to communicate with AI models.

Artificial neural networks

(ANNs). Computational models loosely inspired by the structure and function of the human brain, consisting of interconnected layers of nodes, called neurons, that process input data and learn to recognize patterns and make decisions.

Computational pathology

The use of algorithms, machine learning and image analysis techniques to extract information from digital pathology images.

Computer vision

A field of AI that focuses on enabling computers to analyse and interpret visual data, such as images and videos.

Convolutional neural networks

(CNNs). A type of deep neural network that is especially effective for analysing visual imagery and used in image analysis.

Deep learning

Deep learning is a subfield of machine learning that uses artificial neural networks with multiple layers, called deep neural networks, to learn and extract highly complex features and patterns from raw input data.

Digital images

Visual representations captured and stored in a digital format, consisting of a grid of pixels, with each pixel representing a colour intensity value.

Digital pathology

The practice of converting glass slides into digital slides that can be viewed, managed and analysed on a computer.

Explainability methods

Techniques in AI that provide insights and explanations on how the AI model arrived at its conclusions, thus making the decision-making process of the AI more transparent.

Generative AI

AI systems that can generate new content (text, images or music) that is similar to the content on which it was trained, often creating novel and coherent outputs.

Gigapixel images

Extremely high-resolution digital images consisting of 1 billion pixels, obtained by scanning tissue slides with a slide scanner.

Graphics processing units

(GPUs). Specialized hardware used to rapidly process large blocks of data simultaneously, used in computer gaming and AI.

Large language models

(LLMs). Advanced AI models trained on vast amounts of text data, capable of analysing, generating and manipulating human language, often at the human level174.

Long short-term memory (LSTM) networks

A type of neural network particularly good at processing sequences of data (such as time series or language), with a capability to remember information for a certain time.

Machine learning

A subset of AI focusing on the development of algorithms and models that enable computers to learn and improve their performance on a specific task without being explicitly instructed how to achieve this.

Natural language processing

(NLP). A branch of AI that helps computers to analyse, interpret and respond to human language in a useful way.

Prompt engineering

Crafting inputs or questions in a way that guides AI models, particularly LLMs, to provide the most effective and accurate responses.

Transformers

Types of a neural network model that excel at processing sequences of data, such as sentences in text, by focusing on different parts of the sequence to make predictions175.

Voxel

The three-dimensional equivalent of a pixel in images, representing a value on a regular grid in three-dimensional space, commonly used in medical imaging such as MRI and CT scans.

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Perez-Lopez, R., Ghaffari Laleh, N., Mahmood, F. et al. A guide to artificial intelligence for cancer researchers. Nat Rev Cancer 24, 427–441 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41568-024-00694-7

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