Publication Details
Abstract
Early cancer detection remains challenging due to disease heterogeneity and limitations of single-modality approaches. Multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) integrates imaging, genomic profiles, and clinical indicators to provide comprehensive insights for improved cancer prediction and personalized oncology. This review evaluates multimodal AI frameworks and their applications in integrating heterogeneous data sources for early cancer detection and precision medicine. A comprehensive review was conducted on recent advances in multimodal AI-based cancer detection systems, focusing on medical imaging, genomic and molecular data, and clinical risk indicators. Relevant literature was analyzed to summarize AI architectures, including machine learning, deep learning, radiomics, transformer-based models, and multi-omics integration strategies. The review also examined current applications, challenges, validation approaches, and future directions for clinical translation of multimodal AI technologies. Multimodal AI approaches demonstrate potential for improving cancer detection by combining complementary information from imaging, genomic, and clinical domains. Imaging-based AI models, including convolutional neural networks and radiomics approaches, effectively extract tumor-related features, while genomic AI models identify molecular signatures associated with cancer progression. Integration of multi-omics and electronic health record data enables more comprehensive patient characterization and risk prediction. However, current evidence highlights challenges related to data heterogeneity, missing information, model interpretability, privacy, bias, and limited external validation. Further development of robust and explainable AI systems is required for reliable clinical implementation. Multimodal AI represents a promising research direction for cancer detection, but standardized validation and responsible implementation are essential before routine clinical adoption.