Artificial Intelligence in Plastic Surgery: Applications and Challenges

New developments in artificial intelligence (AI) offer opportunities to enhance plastic surgery practice, research, and education. In this article, we review relevant AI tools and applications, including machine learning, reinforcement learning, and natural language processing. Our own Markov decision process for keloid treatment illustrates how these models are developed and can be used to enhance decision-making in clinical practice. Finally, we discuss challenges of implementing AI and knowledge gaps that must be addressed to successfully apply AI in plastic surgery. Level of Evidence V This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266 .