2025 Volume 76 Issue 5 Pages 264-268
Flexible endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES) can be easily performed in the outpatient setting, in the home, and in elderly care facilities. It is widely recognized as a common instrumental evaluation that plays an important role in diagnosing swallowing impairment. However, expertise and experience are required for appropriate evaluation of the swallowing function in order to assess its dynamics during momentary swallowing movements. Thus, assessments can vary among evaluators depending on said expertise and experience. Therefore, the evaluation and interpretation of FEES findings may differ from evaluator to evaluator, even if the findings come from the same subject. It has also been reported that experienced evaluators safely provided texture-modified diets closer to normal diets for patients with swallowing impairment, compared to inexperienced evaluators. The shortage of experts in the field of swallowing in an aging society has become a social problem; however, becoming an expert is not easy and requires much time and effort. As such, in order to make effective use of limited medical resources, it is necessary to provide support for inexperienced evaluators when they are assessing FEES findings. Recently, the usefulness of artificial intelligence (AI)-based imaging, endoscopy, and pathology evaluation assistance systems has been reported. We have developed an AI-assisted computer-aided diagnosis (AI-assisted CAD) system for the evaluation of FEES in collaboration with researchers specializing in AI. The present review discusses the usefulness of AI-assisted CAD for FEES and its future perspectives.
