ObjectiveTo evaluate the diagnostic value of artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted diagnostic system for pulmonary cancer based on CT images.MethodsDatabases including PubMed, The Cochrane Library, EMbase, CNKI, WanFang Data and Chinese BioMedical Literature Database (CBM) were electronically searched to collect relevant studies on AI-assisted diagnostic system in the diagnosis of pulmonary cancer from 2010 to 2019. The eligible studies were selected according to inclusion and exclusion criteria, and the quality of included studies was assessed and the special information was identified. Then, meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.3, Stata 12.0 and SAS 9.4 softwares. The sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio and diagnostic odds ratio were pooled and the summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curve was drawn. Meta-regression analysis was used to explore the sources of heterogeneity.ResultsTotally 18 studies were included with 4 771 patients. Random effect model was used for the analysis due to the heterogeneity among studies. The results of meta-analysis showed that the pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio, diagnosis odds ratio and area under the SROC curve were 0.87 [95%CI (0.84, 0.90)], 0.89 [95%CI (0.84, 0.92)], 7.70 [95%CI (5.32, 11.15)], 0.14 [95%CI (0.11, 0.19)], 53.54 [95%CI (30.68, 93.42)] and 0.94 [95%CI (0.91, 0.95)], respectively.ConclusionAI-assisted diagnostic system based on CT images has high diagnostic value for pulmonary cancer, and thus it is worthy of clinical application. However, due to the limited quality and quantity of included studies, above results should be validated by more studies.