Digital Twins in cancer: State-of-the-art and open research

Cancer is a dangerous ailment that influences any part of the body and could produce malignant tumors. One feature of cancer is that abnormal cells create quickly and expand beyond their regular bounds. This could attack various parts of the human body and spread to other organs, which is the primary cause of cancer death. Cancer is becoming a more serious worldwide health concern. In the face of these threats, advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), cognitive systems, and the Internet of Things (IoT) may be insufficient to prevent, predict, diagnose, and treat cancer. Digital Twins (DT) with a combination of IoT, AI, cloud computing, and communications technologies such as 5G and 6G have the potential to significant reduce serious cancer threats. Observing data from DT populations may aid in the improvement of some cancer screening, prediction, prevention, detection, treatment, and research investment strategies. Applications of DT medicine specifically cancer, have been studied and analyzed in this paper using both conceptual and statistical analyses. This paper also shows a tree of some ailments where DT is applicable in their study. To the best of our knowledge, there is no literature research on various illnesses and DT specifically cancer disorders. To show the potential of DT, development hurdles of utilizing DT in cancer diseases are discussed, and then, several open research directions will be explained.