Artificial intelligence versus expert endoscopists for diagnosis of gastric cancer in patients who underwent upper gastrointestinal endoscopy

Abstract

Introduction and aims: To compare endoscopy gastric cancer images diagnosis rate between artificial intelligence (AI) and expert endoscopists. Patients and methods: We used the retrospective data of 500 patients, including 100 with gastric cancer, matched 1:1 to diagnosis by AI or expert endoscopists. We retrospectively evaluated the non-inferiority (prespecified margin 5%) of the per-patient rate of gastric cancer diagnosis by AI and compared the per-image rate of gastric cancer diagnosis. Results: Gastric cancer was diagnosed in 49 of 49 patients (100%) in the AI group and 48 of 51 patients (94.12%) in the expert endoscopist group (difference 5.88, 95% confidence interval: −0.58 to 12.3). The per-image rate of gastric cancer diagnosis was higher in the AI group (99.87%, 747/748 images) than in the expert endoscopist group (88.17%, 693/786 images) (difference 11.7%). Conclusions: Non inferiority of the rate of gastric cancer diagnosis by AI was demonstrated but superiority is not demonstrated.