The increasing application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in health and medicine has attracted a great deal of research interest in recent decades. This study aims to provide a global and historical picture of research concerning AI in health and medicine. A total of 27,451 papers that were published between 1977 and 2018 (84.6% were dated 2008–2018) were retrieved from the Web of Science platform. The descriptive analysis examined the publication volume, and authors and countries collaboration. A global network of authors’ keywords and content analysis of related scientific literature highlighted major techniques, including Robotic, Machine learning, Artificial neural network, Artificial intelligence, Natural language process, and their most frequent applications in Clinical Prediction and Treatment. The number of cancer-related publications was the highest, followed by Heart Diseases and Stroke, Vision impairment, Alzheimer’s, and Depression. Moreover, the shortage in the research of AI application to some high burden diseases suggests future directions in AI research. This study offers a first and comprehensive picture of the global efforts directed towards this increasingly important and prolific field of research and suggests the development of global and national protocols and regulations on the justification and adaptation of medical AI products.
The HoloLens (Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA), a head-worn, optically see-through augmented reality (AR) display, is the main player in the recent boost in medical AR research. In this systematic review, we provide a comprehensive overview of the usage of the first-generation HoloLens within the medical domain, from its release in March 2016, until the year of 2021. We identified 217 relevant publications through a systematic search of the PubMed, Scopus, IEEE Xplore and SpringerLink databases. We propose a new taxonomy including use case, technical methodology for registration and tracking, data sources, visualization as well as validation and evaluation, and analyze the retrieved publications accordingly. We find that the bulk of research focuses on supporting physicians during interventions, where the HoloLens is promising for procedures usually performed without image guidance. However, the consensus is that accuracy and reliability are still too low to replace conventional guidance systems. Medical students are the second most common target group, where AR-enhanced medical simulators emerge as a promising technology. While concerns about human-computer interactions, usability and perception are frequently mentioned, hardly any concepts to overcome these issues have been proposed. Instead, registration and tracking lie at the core of most reviewed publications, nevertheless only few of them propose innovative concepts in this direction. Finally, we find that the validation of HoloLens applications suffers from a lack of standardized and rigorous evaluation protocols. We hope that this review can advance medical AR research by identifying gaps in the current literature, to pave the way for novel, innovative directions and translation into the medical routine.
Lorenzo Venturini, Samuel Budd, Alfonso Farruggia
et al.
Abstract The current approach to fetal anomaly screening is based on biometric measurements derived from individually selected ultrasound images. In this paper, we introduce a paradigm shift that attains human-level performance in biometric measurement by aggregating automatically extracted biometrics from every frame across an entire scan, with no need for operator intervention. We use a neural network to classify each frame of an ultrasound video recording. We then measure fetal biometrics in every frame where appropriate anatomy is visible. We use a Bayesian method to estimate the true value of each biometric from a large number of measurements and probabilistically reject outliers. We performed a retrospective experiment on 1457 recordings (comprising 48 million frames) of 20-week ultrasound scans, estimated fetal biometrics in those scans and compared our estimates to real-time manual measurements. Our method achieves human-level performance in estimating fetal biometrics and estimates well-calibrated credible intervals for the true biometric value.
Computer applications to medicine. Medical informatics
Abstract Background Constructing a predictive model is challenging in imbalanced medical dataset (such as preeclampsia), particularly when employing ensemble machine learning algorithms. Objective This study aims to develop a robust pipeline that enhances the predictive performance of ensemble machine learning models for the early prediction of preeclampsia in an imbalanced dataset. Methods Our research establishes a comprehensive pipeline optimized for early preeclampsia prediction in imbalanced medical datasets. We gathered electronic health records from pregnant women at the People’s Hospital of Guangxi from 2015 to 2020, with additional external validation using three public datasets. This extensive data collection facilitated the systematic assessment of various resampling techniques, varied minority-to-majority ratios, and ensemble machine learning algorithms through a structured evaluation process. We analyzed 4,608 combinations of model settings against performance metrics such as G-mean, MCC, AP, and AUC to determine the most effective configurations. Advanced statistical analyses including OLS regression, ANOVA, and Kruskal-Wallis tests were utilized to fine-tune these settings, enhancing model performance and robustness for clinical application. Results Our analysis confirmed the significant impact of systematic sequential optimization of variables on the predictive performance of our models. The most effective configuration utilized the Inverse Weighted Gaussian Mixture Model for resampling, combined with Gradient Boosting Decision Trees algorithm, and an optimized minority-to-majority ratio of 0.09, achieving a Geometric Mean of 0.6694 (95% confidence interval: 0.5855–0.7557). This configuration significantly outperformed the baseline across all evaluated metrics, demonstrating substantial improvements in model performance. Conclusions This study establishes a robust pipeline that significantly enhances the predictive performance of models for preeclampsia within imbalanced datasets. Our findings underscore the importance of a strategic approach to variable optimization in medical diagnostics, offering potential for broad application in various medical contexts where class imbalance is a concern.
Computer applications to medicine. Medical informatics, Analysis
Most prior unsupervised domain adaptation approaches for medical image segmentation are narrowly tailored to either the source-accessible setting, where adaptation is guided by source-target alignment, or the source-free setting, which typically resorts to implicit adaptation mechanisms such as pseudo-labeling and network distillation. This substantial divergence in methodological designs between the two settings reveals an inherent flaw: the lack of an explicit, structured construction of anatomical knowledge that naturally generalizes across domains and settings. To bridge this longstanding divide, we introduce a unified, semantically grounded framework that supports both source-accessible and source-free adaptation. Fundamentally distinct from all prior works, our framework's adaptability emerges naturally as a direct consequence of the model architecture, without relying on explicit cross-domain alignment strategies. Specifically, our model learns a domain-agnostic probabilistic manifold as a global space of anatomical regularities, mirroring how humans establish visual understanding. Thus, the structural content in each image can be interpreted as a canonical anatomy retrieved from the manifold and a spatial transformation capturing individual-specific geometry. This disentangled, interpretable formulation enables semantically meaningful prediction with intrinsic adaptability. Extensive experiments on challenging cardiac and abdominal datasets show that our framework achieves state-of-the-art results in both settings, with source-free performance closely approaching its source-accessible counterpart, a level of consistency rarely observed in prior works. The results provide a principled foundation for anatomically informed, interpretable, and unified solutions for domain adaptation in medical imaging. The code is available at https://github.com/wxdrizzle/remind
Manual annotation of volumetric medical images, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT), is a labor-intensive and time-consuming process. Recent advancements in foundation models for video object segmentation, such as Segment Anything Model 2 (SAM 2), offer a potential opportunity to significantly speed up the annotation process by manually annotating one or a few slices and then propagating target masks across the entire volume. However, the performance of SAM 2 in this context varies. Our experiments show that relying on a single memory bank and attention module is prone to error propagation, particularly at boundary regions where the target is present in the previous slice but absent in the current one. To address this problem, we propose Short-Long Memory SAM 2 (SLM-SAM 2), a novel architecture that integrates distinct short-term and long-term memory banks with separate attention modules to improve segmentation accuracy. We evaluate SLM-SAM 2 on four public datasets covering organs, bones, and muscles across MRI, CT, and ultrasound videos. We show that the proposed method markedly outperforms the default SAM 2, achieving an average Dice Similarity Coefficient improvement of 0.14 and 0.10 in the scenarios when 5 volumes and 1 volume are available for the initial adaptation, respectively. SLM-SAM 2 also exhibits stronger resistance to over-propagation, reducing the time required to correct propagated masks by 60.575% per volume compared to SAM 2, making a notable step toward more accurate automated annotation of medical images for segmentation model development.
Vision foundation models have demonstrated strong generalization in medical image segmentation by leveraging large-scale, heterogeneous pretraining. However, they often struggle to generalize to specialized clinical tasks under limited annotations or rare pathological variations, due to a mismatch between general priors and task-specific requirements. To address this, we propose Uncertainty-informed Collaborative Learning (UnCoL), a dual-teacher framework that harmonizes generalization and specialization in semi-supervised medical image segmentation. Specifically, UnCoL distills both visual and semantic representations from a frozen foundation model to transfer general knowledge, while concurrently maintaining a progressively adapting teacher to capture fine-grained and task-specific representations. To balance guidance from both teachers, pseudo-label learning in UnCoL is adaptively regulated by predictive uncertainty, which selectively suppresses unreliable supervision and stabilizes learning in ambiguous regions. Experiments on diverse 2D and 3D segmentation benchmarks show that UnCoL consistently outperforms state-of-the-art semi-supervised methods and foundation model baselines. Moreover, our model delivers near fully supervised performance with markedly reduced annotation requirements.
E. Iraola, M. García-Lorenzo, F. Lordan-Gomis
et al.
Digital twins are transforming the way we monitor, analyze, and control physical systems, but designing architectures that balance real-time responsiveness with heavy computational demands remains a challenge. Cloud-based solutions often struggle with latency and resource constraints, while edge-based approaches lack the processing power for complex simulations and data-driven optimizations. To address this problem, we propose the High-Precision High-Performance Computer-enabled Digital Twin (HP2C-DT) reference architecture, which integrates High-Performance Computing (HPC) into the computing continuum. Unlike traditional setups that use HPC only for offline simulations, HP2C-DT makes it an active part of digital twin workflows, dynamically assigning tasks to edge, cloud, or HPC resources based on urgency and computational needs. Furthermore, to bridge the gap between theory and practice, we introduce the HP2C-DT framework, a working implementation that uses COMPSs for seamless workload distribution across diverse infrastructures. We test it in a power grid use case, showing how it reduces communication bandwidth by an order of magnitude through edge-side data aggregation, improves response times by up to 2x via dynamic offloading, and maintains near-ideal strong scaling for compute-intensive workflows across a practical range of resources. These results demonstrate how an HPC-driven approach can push digital twins beyond their current limitations, making them smarter, faster, and more capable of handling real-world complexity.
Medical image registration is a fundamental task in medical image analysis, aiming to establish spatial correspondences between paired images. However, existing unsupervised deformable registration methods rely solely on intensity-based similarity metrics, lacking explicit anatomical knowledge, which limits their accuracy and robustness. Vision foundation models, such as the Segment Anything Model (SAM), can generate high-quality segmentation masks that provide explicit anatomical structure knowledge, addressing the limitations of traditional methods that depend only on intensity similarity. Based on this, we propose a novel SAM-assisted registration framework incorporating prototype learning and contour awareness. The framework includes: (1) Explicit anatomical information injection, where SAM-generated segmentation masks are used as auxiliary inputs throughout training and testing to ensure the consistency of anatomical information; (2) Prototype learning, which leverages segmentation masks to extract prototype features and aligns prototypes to optimize semantic correspondences between images; and (3) Contour-aware loss, a contour-aware loss is designed that leverages the edges of segmentation masks to improve the model's performance in fine-grained deformation fields. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed framework significantly outperforms existing methods across multiple datasets, particularly in challenging scenarios with complex anatomical structures and ambiguous boundaries. Our code is available at https://github.com/HaoXu0507/IPMI25-SAM-Assisted-Registration.
The application of computer vision-powered large language models (LLMs) for medical image diagnosis has significantly advanced healthcare systems. Recent progress in developing symmetrical architectures has greatly impacted various medical imaging tasks. While CNNs or RNNs have demonstrated excellent performance, these architectures often face notable limitations of substantial losses in detailed information, such as requiring to capture global semantic information effectively and relying heavily on deep encoders and aggressive downsampling. This paper introduces a novel LLM-based Hybrid-Transformer Network (HybridTransNet) designed to encode tokenized Big Data patches with the transformer mechanism, which elegantly embeds multimodal data of varying sizes as token sequence inputs of LLMS. Subsequently, the network performs both inter-scale and intra-scale self-attention, processing data features through a transformer-based symmetric architecture with a refining module, which facilitates accurately recovering both local and global context information. Additionally, the output is refined using a novel fuzzy selector. Compared to other existing methods on two distinct datasets, the experimental findings and formal assessment demonstrate that our LLM-based HybridTransNet provides superior performance for brain tumor diagnosis in healthcare informatics.
Abstract Background Single-cell RNA sequencing (sc-RNASeq) data illuminate transcriptomic heterogeneity but also possess a high level of noise, abundant missing entries and sometimes inadequate or no cell type annotations at all. Bulk-level gene expression data lack direct information of cell population composition but are more robust and complete and often better annotated. We propose a modeling framework to integrate bulk-level and single-cell RNASeq data to address the deficiencies and leverage the mutual strengths of each type of data and enable a more comprehensive inference of their transcriptomic heterogeneity. Contrary to the standard approaches of factorizing the bulk-level data with one algorithm and (for some methods) treating single-cell RNASeq data as references to decompose bulk-level data, we employed multiple deconvolution algorithms to factorize the bulk-level data, constructed the probabilistic graphical models of cell-level gene expressions from the decomposition outcomes, and compared the log-likelihood scores of these models in single-cell data. We term this framework backward deconvolution as inference operates from coarse-grained bulk-level data to fine-grained single-cell data. As the abundant missing entries in sc-RNASeq data have a significant effect on log-likelihood scores, we also developed a criterion for inclusion or exclusion of zero entries in log-likelihood score computation. Results We selected nine deconvolution algorithms and validated backward deconvolution in five datasets. In the in-silico mixtures of mouse sc-RNASeq data, the log-likelihood scores of the deconvolution algorithms were strongly anticorrelated with their errors of mixture coefficients and cell type specific gene expression signatures. In the true bulk-level mouse data, the sample mixture coefficients were unknown but the log-likelihood scores were strongly correlated with accuracy rates of inferred cell types. In the data of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and normal controls, we found that ASD brains possessed higher fractions of astrocytes and lower fractions of NRGN-expressing neurons than normal controls. In datasets of breast cancer and low-grade gliomas (LGG), we compared the log-likelihood scores of three simple hypotheses about the gene expression patterns of the cell types underlying the tumor subtypes. The model that tumors of each subtype were dominated by one cell type persistently outperformed an alternative model that each cell type had elevated expression in one gene group and tumors were mixtures of those cell types. Superiority of the former model is also supported by comparing the real breast cancer sc-RNASeq clusters with those generated by simulated sc-RNASeq data. Conclusions The results indicate that backward deconvolution serves as a sensible model selection tool for deconvolution algorithms and facilitates discerning hypotheses about cell type compositions underlying heterogeneous specimens such as tumors.
Computer applications to medicine. Medical informatics, Biology (General)
Nicolás Muñoz-Urtubia, Alejandro Vega-Muñoz, Carla Estrada-Muñoz
et al.
Objective This study aimed to determine the status of scientific production on biosensor usage for human health monitoring. Methods We used bibliometrics based on the data and metadata retrieved from the Web of Science between 2007 and 2022. Articles unrelated to health and medicine were excluded. The databases were processed using the VOSviewer software and auxiliary spreadsheets. Data extraction yielded 275 articles published in 161 journals, mainly concentrated on 13 journals and 881 keywords plus. Results The keywords plus of high occurrences were estimated at 27, with seven to 30 occurrences. From the 1595 identified authors, 125 were consistently connected in the coauthorship network in the total set and were grouped into nine clusters. Using Lotka's law, we identified 24 prolific authors, and Hirsch index analysis revealed that 45 articles were cited more than 45 times. Crosses were identified between 17 articles in the Hirsch index and 17 prolific authors, highlighting the presence of a large set of prolific authors from various interconnected clusters, a triad, and a solitary prolific author. Conclusion An exponential trend was observed in biosensor research for health monitoring, identifying areas of innovation, collaboration, and technological challenges that can guide future research on this topic.
Computer applications to medicine. Medical informatics
This paper introduces Med-Bot, an AI-powered chatbot designed to provide users with accurate and reliable medical information. Utilizing advanced libraries and frameworks such as PyTorch, Chromadb, Langchain and Autogptq, Med-Bot is built to handle the complexities of natural language understanding in a healthcare context. The integration of llamaassisted data processing and AutoGPT-Q provides enhanced performance in processing and responding to queries based on PDFs of medical literature, ensuring that users receive precise and trustworthy information. This research details the methodologies employed in developing Med-Bot and evaluates its effectiveness in disseminating healthcare information.
The integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) into medical applications has sparked widespread interest across the healthcare industry, from drug discovery and development to clinical decision support, assisting telemedicine, medical devices, and healthcare insurance applications. This perspective paper aims to discuss the inner workings of building LLM-powered medical AI applications and introduces a comprehensive framework for their development. We review existing literature and outline the unique challenges of applying LLMs in specialized medical contexts. Additionally, we introduce a three-step framework to organize medical LLM research activities: 1) Modeling: breaking down complex medical workflows into manageable steps for developing medical-specific models; 2) Optimization: optimizing the model performance with crafted prompts and integrating external knowledge and tools, and 3) System engineering: decomposing complex tasks into subtasks and leveraging human expertise for building medical AI applications. Furthermore, we offer a detailed use case playbook that describes various LLM-powered medical AI applications, such as optimizing clinical trial design, enhancing clinical decision support, and advancing medical imaging analysis. Finally, we discuss various challenges and considerations for building medical AI applications with LLMs, such as handling hallucination issues, data ownership and compliance, privacy, intellectual property considerations, compute cost, sustainability issues, and responsible AI requirements.
Mohammad S. Alkhowailed, Z. Rasheed, Ali Shariq
et al.
Background The COVID-19 pandemic has enhanced the adoption of virtual learning after the urgent suspension of traditional teaching. Different online learning strategies were established to face this learning crisis. The present descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted to reveal the different digital procedures implemented by the College of Medicine at Qassim University for better student performance and achievement. Methods The switch into distance-based learning was managed by the digitalization committee. Multiple online workshops were conducted to the staff and students about the value and procedures of such a shift. New procedures for online problem-based learning (PBL) sessions were designed. Students’ satisfaction was recorded regarding the efficiency of live streaming educational activities and online assessment. Results The students were satisfied with the overall shift into this collaborative e-learning environment and the new successful procedures of virtual PBL sessions. The digital learning tools facilitated the performance of the students and their peer sharing of knowledge. The role of informatics computer technologies was evident in promoting the students, research skills, and technical competencies. Conclusions The present work elaborated on the procedures and privileges of the transformation into digitalized learning, particularly the PBL sessions, which were appreciated by the students and staff. It recommended the adoption of future online theoretical courses as well as the development of informatics computer technologies.
Juan A. SÁNCHEZ-MARGALLO, Francisco M. SÁNCHEZ-MARGALLO
Advances in sensors, internet of things and artificial intelligence are allowing wearable technology to constantly evolve, making it possible to have increasingly compact and versatile devices with clinically relevant and promising functionalities in the field of surgery. In this sense, wearable technology has been used in various fields of clinical and preclinical application such as the evaluation of the surgeon's ergonomic conditions, the interaction with the patient or the quality of the intervention, as well as surgical planning and assistance during the intervention. In this work we will present different types of wearable technologies for their application in the validation of surgical devices in minimally invasive surgery, and their application in assisting the surgical process. Within these technologies we will show electrodermal activity and electrocardiography devices to monitor the surgeon’s physiological state, and electromyography and motion analysis systems to study his/her ergonomics during the surgical practice. Apart from these systems, the introduction of extended reality technology (virtual, augmented, and mixed reality) has fostered the emergence of new immersive and interactive tools to assist in the planning of complex surgical procedures, surgical support and telementoring. As we can see, the application of wearable technology has a high impact on the validation of surgical systems in minimally invasive surgery, including laparoscopic surgery, microsurgery, and surgical robotics, as well as in the assistance of the surgical process, with the consequent benefit in the quality of patient care.
Computer applications to medicine. Medical informatics
Kaija Saranto, Johanna Ikonen, Samuli Koponen
et al.
Asiakas- ja potilastietojärjestelmien tarjoamaa tukea sosiaali- ja terveydenhuollon työtehtävien suorittamiseen on tutkittu lääkärien, sairaanhoitajien ja sosiaalialan korkeakoulutettujen keskuudessa. Lähihoitajille suunnattu tutkimus on jatkumo näille kyselytutkimuksille. Tutkimustehtävinä oli, miten asiakas- ja potilastietojärjestelmät tukevat lähihoitajien työtehtäviä, yhteistyötä ja tiedonkulkua sekä miten hyödylliseksi lähihoitajat arvioivat nämä tietojärjestelmät työssään. Sähköinen kysely välitettiin Suomen lähi- ja perushoitajaliitto SuPer ry:n ja Julkisten ja hyvinvointialojen liitto JHL:n jäsenrekisterissä oleville työikäisille lähihoitajille keväällä 2022. Aineistosta laskettiin keskiarvoja ja prosenttiosuuksia.
Kyselyyn vastasi 3 866 lähihoitajaa kaikilta hyvinvointialueilta. Vastaajien keski-ikä oli 49 vuotta ja 92,9 % puhui äidinkielenään suomea. Suurin osa lähihoitajista työskenteli sosiaalihuollossa. Kolmanneksella (27,9 %) oli yli 20 vuoden työkokemus. Lähihoitajat arvioivat olevansa kokeneita tietojärjestelmien käyttäjiä ja he kokivat tietojärjestelmät pääasiassa työtään tukeviksi. He kuitenkin raportoivat puutteita tietojärjestelmien yhteenvetonäkymissä. Selvitettäessä tietojärjestelmiin liitettyjä hyötyjä puolet (50‒64 %) lähihoitajista eri toimintaympäristöissä raportoi tietojärjestelmien auttavan heitä turvaamaan hoidon jatkuvuuden. Keskeisenä ongelmana nähtiin, että tietojärjestelmien käyttö vie liian ison osan työajasta asiakkaiden kanssa.
Tietojärjestelmät tukivat tiedonvaihtoa omassa organisaatiossa, mutta tiedonvaihdossa sosiaali- ja terveydenhuollon organisaatioiden välillä oli haasteita. Tietojärjestelmien tuki tiedonvaihtoon asiakkaiden tai heidän omaistensa välillä oli heikkoa. Tietojärjestelmien lisäksi tiedonvaihtoon käytettiin puhelinta tai papereita viikoittain. Aluetietojärjestelmät tai Kanta-palvelut eivät olleet lähihoitajien työssä tavallinen tiedonvaihtotapa.
Lähihoitajien arviot tietojärjestelmistä olivat melko positiivisia. Tiedonhaun tuki organisaatioiden välisessä tiedonvaihdossa ja kokemus siitä, että yhteenvetonäkymien tulisi tukea työtä nykyistä enemmän, vahvistivat aikaisempia kyselytutkimuksia. Tietojärjestelmien tuki työlle korostuu nykytilanteessa, jossa henkilöstövaje ja kasvava palveluntarve asettavat haasteita uusille hyvinvointialueille.
Computer applications to medicine. Medical informatics, Public aspects of medicine