Seminar: Beyond the Scalpel: Empowering Surgeons with AI-powered Robotics, Prof Stefanie Speidel, National Center for Tumor Diseases(NCT/UCC) Dresden

Abstract:

Advanced surgical technologies, like digital ORs and robotics, generate vast data for enhancing patient care. However, leveraging this data efficiently during surgery, a complex and time-sensitive process, remains heavily reliant on surgical staff experience.

This talk focuses on AI-powered robotic surgery with a specific focus on analysis of intraoperative video data. The goal is to democratize surgical skills and enhance the collaboration between surgeons and cyber-physical systems by quantifying surgical experience and make it accessible to machines. Several examples to optimize the therapy of the individual patient along the surgical treatment path are given. Finally, remaining challenges and strategies to overcome them are discussed.

Short Bio:

Stefanie Speidel is a full professor for “Translational Surgical Oncology” and director at the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT/UCC) Dresden since 2017 as well as one of the speakers of the DFG Cluster of Excellence CeTI and the Konrad Zuse AI school SECAI. She received her PhD from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) with distinction in 2009 and had a junior research group “Computer-Assisted Surgery” from 2012 – 2016 at KIT. She is an elected board member of the MICCAI society, a MICCAI fellow, and an appointed member of the German Council for Scientific Information Infrastructures. She has been (co)-authoring more than 130 publications and regularly organizes workshops and challenges including the Endoscopic Vision Challenge@MICCAI and the Surgical Data Science workshop. She has been general chair and program chair for a number of international events including the International Conference on Information Processing in Computer Assisted Interventions (IPCAI) and MICCAI conference. Her current research interests include machine learning for image- and robot-assisted surgery.