Artificial intelligence for diagnosing rare bone diseases: a global survey of healthcare professionals
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Rare bone diseases (RBDs) are an important group of conditions characterized by abnormalities in bone and cartilage. Their large number, individual rarity, and heterogeneity make accurate and timely diagnosis challenging. Establishing correlations between genotype and phenotype (mainly via imaging) is critical for diagnosing RBDs. Image recognition artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to significantly improve the diagnostic process by assisting healthcare providers to identify and differentiate imaging patterns associated with various RBDs. This survey study sought to assess the interest of various healthcare providers worldwide in utilizing an AI-based assistant tool for the differential diagnosis of RBDs. Method Survey data were collected from March to September 2024. The survey was performed online and the link was disseminated via direct email, newsletters, and flyers at scientific talks and conferences. Results We received 103 completed surveys, representing respondents from 27 different countries covering most global regions, but mostly from Europe, the United States, and Canada. The majority of the participants are physicians (n = 92, 89%) and primarily work at academic medical centers (n = 84, 81%). While each participant could select multiple specialties, the most frequent clinician types were medical geneticists, pediatricians, and endocrinologists, accounting for 71 (69%) of the respondents. Ninety-four (91%) of the respondents find imaging to be very or extremely important, and the majority (n = 84, 81%) consider X-rays to be the most important imaging modality. Although around half of the participants (n = 45) have concerns about AI-related errors and consider the explainability of AI algorithms to be very (42/103) or extremely (9/103) important, 81% of the respondents report that they are somewhat (n = 39) or extremely (n = 45) likely to consider integrating image recognition AI into their current diagnostic workflow. Conclusions Most survey participants are open to integrating image recognition AI into their RBD diagnostic workflow. However, concerns about AI-related errors, privacy, and model interpretability highlight the importance of transparent collaboration between developers and healthcare professionals throughout the development process to ensure that such technologies are clinically trustworthy and practically adoptable.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.018 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".