AccScience Publishing / AIH / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/AIH026030004
BRIEF REPORT

A scope of the literature on artificial intelligence in oncology

Myung Sun Kim1 Rajat Thawani2 Alyson Hazlam3 Yulin Hswen3,4,5*
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1 Hematology/Medical Oncology, Compass Oncology, Portland, Oregon, United States of America
2 Knight Cancer Institute, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, Oregon, United States of America
3 Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, University of Maryland Schol of Public Health, College Park, United States of America
4 College of College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, United States of America
5 The Artificial Intelligence Interdisciplinary Institute at Maryland, College Park, United States of America
Received: 16 January 2026 | Revised: 24 February 2026 | Accepted: 27 February 2026 | Published online: 12 May 2026
© 2026 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming healthcare and is increasingly applied across the cancer care continuum. However, prior studies of its use have focused on relatively narrow applications. This scoping review characterizes the current landscape of AI applications in oncology published over the past five years. A two-part literature search was conducted in November 2024. First, nine high-impact journals were manually reviewed for articles published from November 2019 to November 2024 containing the term “artificial intelligence.” Second, a structured PubMed search using “artificial intelligence” AND “cancer” was performed, limited to the same period and filtered by study type, to classify studies by their primary area of application. Of 1,305 records screened, 575 studies met the inclusion criteria. Most studies spanned multiple medical subspecialties (n = 154, 27%) or focused on cancer detection (n = 145, 25%). The most frequently studied tumor categories were multiple tumor types (16%), breast (14%), genitourinary (13%), lower gastrointestinal cancers (12%), and lung (12%). Radiomics (n = 153, 27%) and unstructured clinical data (n = 123, 21%) were the most common data sources. The most common primary applications were predictive modeling (n = 157, 27.3%) and biomarker development (n = 156, 27.1%). Current AI research in oncology is dominated by a focus on cancer therapy and diagnosis. Future research requires prospective, multi-institutional validation and evaluation frameworks that incorporate factors such as clinical impact, workflow integration, cost-effectiveness, and ethics. Collaboration among patients, clinicians, ethicists, and healthcare leaders will be key to prioritizing research into underrepresented cancer types, mitigating AI bias, and ensuring that AI innovations are clinically meaningful and sustainable.

Graphical abstract
Keywords
Artificial intelligence
Oncology
Cancer therapy
Funding
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grant number: P01 AG082653); YH was supported by this grant.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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Artificial Intelligence in Health, Electronic ISSN: 3029-2387 Print ISSN: 3041-0894, Published by AccScience Publishing