The New Age of Artificial Intelligence in Surgery
Artificial Intelligence, also known as AI, can be defined as the study of algorithms that give machines the ability to reason and perform cognitive functions like problem solving and decision making.1 You may be asking yourself if you will be talking to Alexa and Siri by the time you become a surgeon. We are not quite there yet, but with the increasing usage of artificial intelligence in your curriculum, you may become masters with using Alexa and Siri to your advantage.
The first concept to learn is natural language processing (NLP). NLP is a type of linguistics concerned with the interactions between computers and human language. In surgery, NLP will influence your preoperative planning by combing through electronic medical records data and achieve human level understanding. For instance, you will be able to understand if your patients’ historic surgeries were difficult in nature and how the patient felt afterwards without reading ICD codes. Our training will also go over how to use computer vision. Computer vision utilizes mathematical techniques to analyze visual images or video streams as quantifiable features such as color, texture, and position that can be used within a dataset to identify statistically meaningful events such as bleeding.2 Surgeons will be afforded the opportunity to learn from high-definition surgical video data at Mast Labs. These images will provide a detailed road map of the surgery and help guide new surgeons to perform a surgery well on their first attempt. Lastly, you will learn about machine learning which enables machines to learn and make predictions by recognizing patterns. Machines will be able to interpret the organs of the body and find abnormalities such as bleeding from a non-bleeding tissue. Machine learning can also increase the intelligence of surgical robots. Surgical robots can automate a simple surgery and bring greater accuracy to tasks like suturing, incisions, or placing metal in the bone. With these three skills, you will become a surgeon equipped with the best training tools.
Surgeons must stop thinking man-versus-machine and rather be in unison with the machine: man-with-machine. This can improve the efficiencies of surgeries while keeping the patient’s safety at the forefront. Mast Labs offers the most up-to-date and advanced training to become a highly equipped surgeon.
References
Bellman R. An introduction to artificial intelligence: Can computers think? Thomson Course Technology. 1978 [Google Scholar]
Hashimoto, Daniel A et al. “Artificial Intelligence in Surgery: Promises and Perils.” Annals of surgery vol. 268,1 (2018): 70-76. doi:10.1097/SLA.0000000000002693
