Artificial Intelligence in Lower Gastrointestinal Endoscopy: The Current Status and Future Perspective

The present manuscript aims to review the history, recent advances, evidence, and challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) in colonoscopy. Although it is mainly focused on polyp detection and characterization, it also considers other potential applications (i.e., inflammatory bowel disease) and future perspectives. Some of the most recent algorithms show promising results that are similar to human expert performance. The integration of AI in routine clinical practice will be challenging, with significant issues to overcome (i.e., regulatory, reimbursement). Medico-legal issues will also need to be addressed. With the exception of an AI system that is already available in selected countries (GI Genius; Medtronic, Minneapolis, MN, USA), the majority of the technology is still in its infancy and has not yet been proven to reach a sufficient diagnostic performance to be adopted in the clinical practice. However, larger players will enter the arena of AI in the next few months.