The Hotspots and Frontier Trends of Artificial Intelligence in the Clinical Diagnosis and Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease: Bibliometric Analysis of the Past 20 Years

Background Currently, the number of research papers on the application of artificial intelligence to the field of Alzheimer's disease (AD) has increased significantly. It is important to clarify the latest research hotspots and future development trends in this field. Objective To summarize the relevant research on the application of artificial intelligence to AD through bibliometric analysis, and clarify the research hotspots and trends from 2004 to 2023. Methods Literature on the application of artificial intelligence to AD from January 2004 to June 2023 was searched for in the Web of Science core database, and Microsoft Office Excel, CiteSpace, and VOSviewer software were used to visually analyze the number of publications, countries, authors, institutions, keywords, and co-citation networks of the literature. Results Ultimately 3 189 articles were included. The number of literature on the application of artificial intelligence to AD has steadily increased since 2004 and has grown rapidly since 2015, with a maximum of over 600 articles. A total of 94 countries, 3 930 institutions, 13 563 authors, and 52 019 cited authors participated in this study. Among them, the United States and China were in a leading position in this field; Republic of Korea universities ranked first in terms of the number of publications; In addition, ZHANG DAOQIANG, LIU MINGXIA, SUK HEUNG-IL, and CLIFFORD R. JACK Jr were not only prolific authors but also the authors with the most citations. The visualization analysis of keywords and literature citations revealed that regarding the application of artificial intelligence to AD, the diagnosis and disease course classification of AD, as well as the prediction of its risk factors, are current research hotspots and that task analysis are future research trends. Conclusion The application of artificial intelligence to AD has attracted widespread attention from researchers worldwide. The diagnosis and classification of AD, as well as the prediction of its risk factors, are current research hotspots. Developing adjunctive drugs in task analysis, personalized treatment and care, and improving the algorithm performance of artificial intelligence may be research trends in the future.