Today's Edition
NEW YORK (dpa)
A robot has performed realistic surgery on its own with 100% accuracy, researchers have said.
In a "major leap" towards using more robots in operating theatres, a machine trained on the videos of surgeries was able to precisely work on removing a gallbladder.
The robot operated with the expertise of a skilled human surgeon, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers in the US, even during unexpected scenarios typical in real-life medical emergencies.
The robot was watched as it performed a lengthy phase of a gallbladder removal on a life-like patient.
It was able to respond to and learn from voice commands from the team, just like a novice surgeon working with a mentor.
Overall, there were 17 tasks in the surgery, the robot had to identify certain ducts and arteries and grab them precisely, strategically place clips, and sever parts with scissors. It was also able to adapt even when dye was introduced which changed
the appearance of the organs and tissue.
Associate professor in mechanical engineering, Axel Krieger, said: "This advancement moves us from robots that can execute specific surgical tasks to robots that truly understand surgical procedures.
"This is a critical distinction that brings us significantly closer to clinically viable autonomous surgical systems that can work in the messy, unpredictable reality of actual patient care."
The work received US government funding and was published in the journal Science Robotics.
Back in 2022, a robot performed the first autonomous robotic surgery on a pig.
However, it required specially marked tissue, operated in a highly controlled environment, and followed a rigid, pre-determined surgical plan.
The new system, which uses the same machine learning architecture that powers ChatGPT, also adapts to a patient's anatomical features in real-time and works to correct itself.
It can respond to spoken commands such as "grab the gallbladder head" or "move the left arm a bit to the left," and then learns from that feedback.
Although the robot took longer to perform the work than a human surgeon, the results were comparable to an expert surgeon, researchers said.
Next, the team will train and test the system on more types of surgeries.
