Robotic Digital Microscopy in (Micro)Surgery
The goal of DiMIRoS is to increase accuracy and efficiency of surgical execution while minimising associated complications. Complex decision making is an inherent part of successful surgery. Surgeon’s experience, proper equipment, the right information are some of the key parameters in performing a successful surgery. To safely perform a highly delicate oncological neurosurgery or restorative microsurgery, it is necessary to introduce innovative, practical and efficient solutions.
The cost of a major surgical procedure is 10.000 euro on average, and a rough estimate is that 10% of total surgical interventions are major (around 150.000) then the cost of these surgical interventions are about 1.500 million euro. If 30% is spent on complications, (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25960291/) then the costs are estimated on 500 million euro per year. These are only the in-hospital costs, not accounting for economic cost of care at home, inability to work and loss of quality of life. Aiming at the reduction of complications by 50%, introduction of surgical platform would result in an economic benefit for the Netherlands of around 250 to 300 million euro per year.
In the project the advantages of robotic digital microscopy will be combined with novel and innovative methods for semi-automatic analysis of surgical interventions. The analysis methods based on novel AI models will be used to extract surgical patterns, leading to most efficient and beneficial surgical solutions.
Established through Public Private Partnership, DiMiRoS project combines unique microsurgical expertise (ErasmusMC) and experts on digital robot technologies (Synaptive Medical Inc) and surgical process modelling and AI approaches (TU Delft). The outcome will be a safer surgical intervention, improved surgical training, enhanced 3D visualisation, resulting in a reduced number of unsuccessful surgeries, a decreased load on surgeons, nurses and other healthcare providers, and finally a better patient outcome.
