Abstract
Breast cancer remains one of the most prevalent cancers worldwide, necessitating reliable, efficient, and precise diagnostic methods. Meanwhile, the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) presents significant opportunities for integration into various fields, including healthcare, by enabling the processing of medical data and the early detection of cancer. This review examines the major medical imaging techniques used for breast cancer detection, specifically mammography, ultrasound, and thermography, and identifies widely used publicly available datasets in this domain. It also surveys traditional machine learning and deep learning approaches commonly applied to the analysis of mammographic, ultrasound, and thermographic images, discussing key studies in the field and evaluating the potential of different AI techniques for breast cancer detection. Furthermore, the review highlights the development and integration of explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) to enhance transparency and trust in medical imaging-based diagnoses. Finally, it considers potential future directions, including the application of large language models (LLMs) and multimodal LLMs in breast cancer diagnosis, emphasizing recent research aimed at advancing the precision, accessibility, and reliability of diagnostic systems.