YANG Xiaofan 1,2 , CHEN Gang 1,2 , DU Jiasheng 1,2 , HE Huan 1,2 , YIN Xinglong 1,2
  • 1. Kunming Medical University, Kunming 610054, P. R. China;
  • 2. Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, The Affiliated Ganmei Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Kunming 650034, P. R. China;
CHEN Gang, Email: kmcgl23@163.com
hepatocellular carcinoma; early diagnosis; liquid biopsy; artificial intelligence; circulating tumor DNA; circulating tumor cell; exosome
10.7507/1007-9424.202603040
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Objective To review advances in liquid biopsy and artificial intelligence (AI) on early diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods Recent studies on early diagnosis of HCC were summarized. Results Traditional biomarkers has limited sensitivity for early diagnosis of HCC, whereas combined biomarker-based strategies can improve diagnostic performance. Circulating tumor DNA, circulating tumor cells, exosomal RNA and protein biomarkers can compensate for conventional detect approaches. Multi-analyte panels show superior diagnostic performance compared than single detection agent. AI-based approaches can support the identification and selection of key molecular features, the integration of multi-source data, and risk stratification, thereby improving the detection of early-stage HCC. However, their clinical implementation remains limited by the lack of unified detection workflows, insufficient multicenter external validation, and inadequate model interpretability. Conclusions Early diagnosis of HCC is moving from single serum biomarkers toward to combined markers, and further progress to AI-assisted stratified screening. In future, multicenter prospective validation, build standardized workflows and biologically interpretable models can improve early diagnosis of HCC.

Citation： YANG Xiaofan, CHEN Gang, DU Jiasheng, HE Huan, YIN Xinglong. Advances in liquid biopsy and artificial intelligence for the early diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma. CHINESE JOURNAL OF BASES AND CLINICS IN GENERAL SURGERY, 2026, 33(6): 856-864. doi: 10.7507/1007-9424.202603040 Copy

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