Radiologist's Guide to Evaluating Publications of Clinical Research on AI: How We Do It

Abstract

Literacy in research studies of artificial intelligence (AI) has become an important skill for radiologists. It is required to make a proper assessment of the validity, reproducibility, and clinical applicability of AI studies. However, AI studies are generally perceived to be more difficult for clinician readers to evaluate than traditional clinical research studies. This special report-as an effective, concise guide for readers-aims to assist clinical radiologists in critically evaluating different types of clinical research articles involving AI. It does not intend to be a comprehensive checklist or methodological summary for complete clinical evaluation of AI or a reporting guideline. Ten key items for readers to check are described, regarding study purpose, function and clinical context of AI, training data, data preprocessing, AI modeling techniques, test data, AI performance, helpfulness and value of AI, interpretability of AI, and code sharing. The important aspects of each item are explained for readers to consider when reading publications on AI clinical research. Evaluating each item can help radiologists assess the validity, reproducibility, and clinical applicability of clinical research articles involving AI.