A Giant Step Forward for the Application of AI in Surgery

• Photos provided by Advantech and Theator Inc.
• Interview with Theator Inc

Although somewhat limited, the dream of autonomous actions in surgery is already here. In the process of surgical care, AI has the potential to improve surgeon performance, patient outcomes, and doctor–patient relations. Catering to this smart healthcare trend, Theator has leveraged Advantech’s medical-grade solution to realize the world’s first Surgical Intelligence Platform.

Smarter surgical decision-making and precision

Theator, a company dedicated to pioneering the surgical intelligence revolution with advanced AI, is creating a whole new practice of AI being used in surgery by integrating it into everyday surgical practices. Their vision is to leverage surgical intelligence to build a next-generation operating room with AI-driven, real time surgical decision making support in robotic and laparoscopic procedures.

Turning their vision into reality, Theator has assembled a team of leading surgeons, computer vision experts, clinical specialists, and software developers to develop advanced AI capabilities powered by computer vision to build a Surgical Intelligence Platform using real world scientific data. Surgical intelligence utilizes AI and video to scan video footage of real-world procedures, identifies critical moments, and annotates them with smart metatags. The result is an indexed library of fully annotated procedures along with individual and hospital wide analytics on surgical performance, giving surgeons unprecedented insight into how to improve their surgical performance, helping reduce unpredictability whilst improving accuracy and precision. For Theator to implement AI-powered solutions in hospitals, various support is needed from the industry. As a leading povider of certified medical computing systems and smart healthcare solutions, Advantech is naturally the ideal partnership choice for Theator, as Advantech has a wide range of off-the-shelf certified medical hardware platforms with high processing power for data acquisition and AI deployment.

Surgical Intelligence from medical grade edge server

Catering to Theator’s requirements in realizing its Surgical Intelligence Platform, Advantech proposed its USM-500, a cost-effective yet powerful and scalable solution for AI applications. The USM-500 is a medical-grade edge server equipped with an 8th Gen Intel® Core™i7/i5/i3 processor and four PCIe slots for integrated graphics and data capture cards for video recording and analysis. With Advantech’s rich experience in the medical industry, the USM-500 was designed with various expansion options, giving solution providers flexibility without having to worry about the corresponding drivers, operating system, or heat dissipation. Additionally, as display and video capture technologies have advanced to 4K resolution, medical visualization technology and minimally invasive surgery equipment have also migrated to 4K resolution, offering clear, sharp images of human tissue, blood vessels, and structures. To improve surgical performance and optimization, customization was needed for this project, so two video capture cards and an NVIDIA RTX-4000 graphics card were added to capture 4K video data and perform AI-assisted analysis in real time. In the implementation, the USM-500 was integrated with Theator’s Surgical Intelligence Platform and mounted on a laparoscopic cart in the operating room. As the NVIDIA RTX-4000 platform processes the captured video, Theator’s software uploaded to its virtual training environment in the Amazon and Azure clouds, which provided access to more than30,000 hours of surgical footage to help surgeons with preoperative preparation and postoperative analysis.

As AI expands its footprint from databases to intra operative video analysis in healthcare systems, Surgical Intelligence Platform is playing a vital part in revolutionizing the way surgery is taught and practiced. With Advantech’s collaboration, Theator is taking a giant step forward in accelerating the application of AI in surgery.

The USM-500 was integrated with Theator’s Surgical Intelligence Platform

Theator Surgical Intelligence Platform

Case Study Benefits

1. A cost-effective yet powerful and scalable solution for AI applications
2. NVIDIA RTX-4000 can process 4Kvideo data and execute AI algorithms and analysis in real time.

Learn more with WISE-IoT Intelligent Healthcare 2022