Review and Recommendations for using Artificial Intelligence in Intracoronary Optical Coherence Tomography Analysis

TL;DR

This systematic review evaluates AI models for intracoronary OCT analysis in diagnosing coronary artery disease, highlighting current limitations and providing recommendations to improve clinical applicability and research practices.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive analysis of existing AI models for IVOCT-based CAD diagnosis and proposes guidelines to enhance their clinical utility and validation.

Findings

Most models are not suitable for clinical use due to methodological flaws.

Many studies suffer from biases affecting model validity.

Recommendations aim to improve research quality and model validation.

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) methodologies hold great promise for the rapid and accurate diagnosis of coronary artery disease (CAD) from intravascular optical coherent tomography (IVOCT) images. Numerous papers have been published describing AI-based models for different diagnostic tasks, yet it remains unclear which models have potential clinical utility and have been properly validated. This systematic review considered published literature between January 2015 and February 2023 describing AI-based diagnosis of CAD using IVOCT. Our search identified 5,576 studies, with 513 included after initial screening and 35 studies included in the final systematic review after quality screening. Our findings indicate that most of the identified models are not currently suitable for clinical use, primarily due to methodological flaws and underlying biases. To address these issues, we provide recommendations to improve model quality and research practices to enhance the development of clinically useful AI products.