Artificial intelligence applications for managing metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease: Current status and future prospects

The incidence and prevalence of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) have continued to increase in recent years, making it one of the most common chronic liver diseases worldwide. MASLD is highly comorbid with obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and chronic kidney disease, posing a serious threat to public health and creating a significant medical and socioeconomic burden. Despite advances in research, current clinical practice still faces considerable challenges in early screening, risk stratification, prognostic prediction, and long-term therapeutic monitoring. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have provided transformative opportunities to address these challenges. AI has demonstrated unique advantages in imaging interpretation, multiomics integration, electronic health record analysis, and remote health management, significantly improving the accuracy and efficiency of the noninvasive diagnosis, individualized risk stratification, precision therapy, and dynamic disease monitoring of MASLD. In this mini-review, the latest advances in AI applications for MASLD diagnosis and management are systematically summarized, and a forward-looking perspective on the role of AI in enabling the next generation of smart health care systems for MASLD is offered, with the aim of providing theoretical and practical guidance for the clinical management of this disease.