A robot has performed realistic surgery on its own with 100% accuracy, researchers have announced.
Warning: Graphic images of the surgery below
In a “major leap” towards using more robots in operating theatres, a machine trained on the videos of surgeries was able to remove a gallbladder from a life-like patient.
The robot was said to have 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 able to respond to and learn from voice commands from the team, just like a novice surgeon working with a mentor.
There were 17 tasks in the surgery, with the robot having 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.
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Axel Krieger, associate professor in mechanical engineering, 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 federal government funding and was published in the journal Science Robotics.
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.
Mr Krieger said that phase was like teaching a robot to drive along a carefully mapped route.
But the new system, he claimed, was “like teaching a robot to navigate any road, in any condition, responding intelligently to whatever it encounters”.
He added: “To me, it really shows that it’s possible to perform complex surgical procedures autonomously.”
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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.
Ji Woong Kim, a former postdoctoral researcher at Johns Hopkins who is now at Stanford University, said: “Our work shows that AI models can be made reliable enough for surgical autonomy – something that once felt far-off but is now demonstrably viable.”
Although the robot took longer to perform the work than a human surgeon, the results were comparable to an expert surgeon, researchers said.
The team will next train and test the system on more types of surgeries.
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Nuha Yassin, consultant colorectal surgeon and council member and lead for the future of surgery, robotics, and digital surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCS England), said: “It’s always exciting to see new developments in surgical innovation, especially in areas like robotics and digital surgery.
“That said, the real test will be how safely and effectively the findings of this study can be translated into human trials. We need to make sure that progress doesn’t come at the expense of patient safety.”
