A Systematic, Scalable, and Interpretable Mapping of Artificial Intelligence Research in Leukemia Using a Hybrid Machine Learning and Qualitative Framework

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been increasingly applied to leukemia research, spanning diagnostic, prognostic, therapeutic, and translational domains. However, the rapid growth and methodological diversity of this literature present challenges for existing reviews, which are often constrained by limited scope, narrow clinical focus, or reliance on either manual or purely bibliometric approaches. As a result, cross-domain relationships, evolving methodological trends, and the interaction between data modalities and clinical objectives remain insufficiently understood. This paper presents a systematic, AI-assisted literature analysis of AI applications in leukemia, combining scalable machine-driven discovery with author-led qualitative interpretation. Using a PRISMA-guided screening process, a corpus of 2338 peer-reviewed publications retrieved from Scopus (1990–2024) is analyzed through semantic text representation and unsupervised clustering. An iterative human–machine process is employed to identify and refine 23 analytical parameters grouped into five macro-parameters, enabling structured organization of the research landscape across diagnostic, prognostic, therapeutic, genetic, and methodological dimensions. Building on this structured representation, in-depth qualitative analysis is conducted by the authors across parameters and macro-parameters, synthesizing methodological developments, data usage patterns, application domains, and commonly used datasets. The resulting analysis provides a coherent, interpretable mapping of AI-driven leukemia research, supporting cross-domain comparison and identification of research concentrations, fragmentation, and emerging directions. By integrating large-scale automation with domain-informed qualitative analysis in a reusable analytical pipeline, this work contributes a rigorous and transferable framework for structured literature analysis in leukemia and related biomedical domains.