Artificial Intelligence in COPD: New Venues to Study a Complex Disease

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a complex and heterogeneous disease that can benefit from novel approaches to understanding its evolution and divergent trajectories. Artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized how we can use clinical, imaging, and molecular data to understand and model complex systems. AI has shown impressive results in areas related to automated clinical decision making, radiological interpretation and prognostication. The unique nature of COPD and the accessibility to well-phenotyped populations result in an ideal scenario for AI development. This review provides an introduction to AI and deep learning and presents some recent successes in applying AI in COPD. Finally, we will discuss some of the opportunities, challenges, and limitations for AI applications in the context of COPD.