Data set terminology of deep learning in medicine: a historical review and recommendation

Medicine and deep learning-based artificial intelligence (AI) engineering represent two distinct fields each with decades of published history. The current rapid convergence of deep learning and medicine has led to significant advancements, yet it has also introduced ambiguity regarding data set terms common to both fields, potentially leading to miscommunication and methodological discrepancies. This narrative review aims to give historical context for these terms, accentuate the importance of clarity when these terms are used in medical deep learning contexts, and offer solutions to mitigate misunderstandings by readers from either field. Through an examination of historical documents, including articles, writing guidelines, and textbooks, this review traces the divergent evolution of terms for data sets and their impact. Initially, the discordant interpretations of the word ‘validation’ in medical and AI contexts are explored. We then show that in the medical field as well, terms traditionally used in the deep learning domain are becoming more common, with the data for creating models referred to as the ‘training set’, the data for tuning of parameters referred to as the ‘validation (or tuning) set’, and the data for the evaluation of models as the ‘test set’. Additionally, the test sets used for model evaluation are classified into internal (random splitting, cross-validation, and leave-one-out) sets and external (temporal and geographic) sets. This review then identifies often misunderstood terms and proposes pragmatic solutions to mitigate terminological confusion in the field of deep learning in medicine. We support the accurate and standardized description of these data sets and the explicit definition of data set splitting terminologies in each publication. These are crucial methods for demonstrating the robustness and generalizability of deep learning applications in medicine. This review aspires to enhance the precision of communication, thereby fostering more effective and transparent research methodologies in this interdisciplinary field.