Knowledge Based Versus Data Based: A Historical Perspective on a Continuum of Methodologies for Medical Image Analysis

The advent of big data and deep learning algorithms has promoted a major shift toward data-driven methods in medical image analysis recently. However, the medical image analysis field has a long and rich history inclusive of both knowledge-driven and data-driven methodologies. In the present article, we provide a historical review of an illustrative sample of medical image analysis methods and locate them along a knowledge-driven versus data-driven continuum. In doing so, we highlight the historical importance as well as current-day relevance of more traditional, knowledge-based artificial intelligence approaches and their complementarity with fully data-driven techniques such as deep learning.