Surgery robot working with dead pigs
Juo-Tung Chen/Johns Hopkins University
The AI-powered robot was able to remove the gallbladder from a dead pig, as researchers claimed it was the first realistic machine-based surgery with little human intervention.
The robot is equipped with a two-layer AI system trained in 17 hours of video, including 16,000 movements carried out in a human surgeon's operation. Working, the first layer of the AI system will watch the video from an endoscope that monitors the surgery and issue plain language instructions such as “clip the second duct”, while the second layer will turn each instruction into a three-dimensional tool movement.
Overall, gallbladder surgery required 17 separate tasks. The robot system performed eight operations and was 100% successful on all tasks.
“Current surgical robotics technology has made some procedures less invasive, but the complication rate has not actually been reduced from previous laparoscopes. [keyhole] Surgery [by human surgeons]says Axel Krieger, a team member at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.
“This study really highlights the art of AI and the possibilities of surgical robotics,” says Danail Stoyanov of University College London. “Incredible advances in computer vision for surgical videos, with open robotic platforms available for research, will enable us to demonstrate surgical automation.”
However, Stoyanov has many challenges remaining to make the system practical in clinical use.
For one thing, the robot completed the task with 100% success, but had to self-correct six times per case. For example, this could mean a gripper designed to grasp the artery that missed the artery in the first attempt.
“There were a lot of examples where I had to self-correct, and all of this was completely autonomous,” says Krieger. “It correctly identifies the initial mistake and corrects itself.” The robot also had to ask the human to change one of the surgical instruments to another. In other words, some human intervention was required.
Ferdinandrodriguez Y Baina of Imperial College London is keen on the growing possibility of robotic surgery. “The future is bright – and appetizingly close,” he says. “To achieve this safely in humans, regulations must follow suit.
The next step is to let the robot autonomously operate with living animals where breathing and bleeding can complicate things.
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