Ethical and legal concerns in artificial intelligence applications for the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer: a scoping review.

Introduction: Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly integrating into the healthcare field, particularly in lung cancer care, including screening, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis. While these applications offer promising advancements, they also raise complex challenges that must be addressed to ensure responsible implementation in clinical practice. This scoping review explores the ethical and legal aspects of AI applications in lung cancer. Methods: A search was conducted across PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, PROSPERO, OAIster, and CABI. A total of 581 records were initially retrieved, of which 20 met the eligibility criteria and were included in the review. The PRISMA guidelines were followed. Results: The most frequently reported ethical concern was data privacy. Other recurrent issues included informed consent, no harm to patients, algorithmic bias and fairness, transparency, equity in AI access and use, and trust. The most frequently raised legal concerns were data protection and privacy, although issues relating to cybersecurity, liability, safety and effectiveness, the lack of appropriate regulation, and intellectual property law were also noted. Solutions proposed ranged from technical approaches to calls for regulatory and policy development. However, many studies lacked comprehensive legal analysis, and most included papers originated from high-income countries. This highlights the need for a broader global perspective. Discussion: This review found that data privacy and protection are the most prominent ethical and legal concerns in AI applications for lung cancer care. Deep Learning (DL) applications, especially in diagnostic imaging, are closely tied to data privacy, lack of transparency, and algorithmic bias. Hybrid and multimodal AI systems raise additional concerns regarding informed consent and the lack of proper regulations. Ethical issues were more frequently addressed than legal ones, with limited consideration for global applicability, particularly in low- and lower middle-income countries. Although technical and policy solutions have been proposed, these remain largely unvalidated and fragmented, with limited real-world feasibility or scalability.