The challenges of colposcopy for cervical cancer screening in LMICs and solutions by artificial intelligence | BMC Medicine | Full Text

The challenges of colposcopy for cervical cancer screening in LMICs and solutions by artificial intelligence | BMC Medicine | Full Text

The challenges of colposcopy for cervical cancer screening in LMICs and solutions by artificial intelligence

• Peng Xue, 
• Man Tat Alexander Ng & 
• Youlin Qiao 

BMC Medicine volume 18, Article number: 169 (2020) Cite this article

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Abstract

Background

The World Health Organization (WHO) called for global action towards the elimination of cervical cancer. One of the main strategies is to screen 70% of women at the age between 35 and 45 years and 90% of women managed appropriately by 2030. So far, approximately 85% of cervical cancers occur in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The colposcopy-guided biopsy is crucial for detecting cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) and becomes the main bottleneck limiting screening performance. Unprecedented advances in artificial intelligence (AI) enable the synergy of deep learning and digital colposcopy, which offers opportunities for automatic image-based diagnosis. To this end, we discuss the main challenges of traditional colposcopy and the solutions applying AI-guided digital colposcopy as an auxiliary diagnostic tool in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs).