Session 4: Future Medical Robotics
Miniaturized surgical robots controlled with magnetic fields as they travel through human bodies, and living bio-hybrid musculoskeletal robots: The confluence of AI, robotics, and medical technology is an extremely exciting field of research.
The talk by Prof. Dr. Stefanie Speidel, TU Dresden, is all about AI-powered robotic surgery with a particular focus on the analysis of in-traoperative video data. The goal is to digitize surgical skills and to improve the collaboration between surgeons and cyber-physical systems by quantifying surgical experience and making it accessible to machines.
The research conducted by Prof. Dr. Pietro Valdastri, University of Leeds, includes the development of minimally invasive surgical methods using miniaturized robots and surgical tools controlled via magnetic fields. They can penetrate human tissue without inflicting any harm on the patient. He will share his knowledge in his talk on ‘Livesaving soft magnetic surgical robots’.
Dr. Chiheb Dahmani, Head of Technology & Innovation for mechatronic products at Siemens Healthineers, provides an overview of current and future fields of application for robots and robotic exoskeletons in healthcare environments – including operating theaters, rehabilitation, and nursing. He will also address the limits of this technology in direct contact with patients.
Talks and speakers in this session
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.
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 150 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.
Beyond the Scalpel: Revolutionizing Surgery with AI and Robotics
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.
Hightech Summit Session: Future Medical Robotics
In this talk, we will explore the transformative impact of robotics in healthcare, highlighting its most significant achievements, notable failures, and the challenges that lie ahead. From surgical robots revolutionizing precision in the operating room to robotic exoskeletons aiding in-patient rehabilitation, we will delve into the innovations that have reshaped medical practices. We will also examine the setbacks and limitations faced by these technologies, providing a balanced view of their current state. Finally, we will discuss the future challenges and opportunities for robotics in healthcare, envisioning a path towards more advanced and integrated solutions.
Engineer Chiheb Dahmani, PhD, and his team develop medical assistance robots that are intended to help hospital staff with routine tasks and allow them to spend more of their time on what really matters: Caring for their patients.
Dahmani, who was born and grew up in Tunisia, is an enthusiatic medtech engineer. He became very interested in medicine at an early age: “As a child, I actually wanted to be a neurosurgeon. I was captivated by the whole idea, but it turned out to involve too much learning by heart,” he admits with a smile. He decided to take a different path in the medical field and become an engineer instead: “It’s important to me that my work helps people,” he reveals. After graduating from high school, he won a scholarship to study engineering at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany. There, Dahmani eventually gained a doctorate for his work on the use of magnetic nanoparticles in medicine.
Dahmani started his professional career with the Siemens Graduate Program (SGP), which aims to prepare young talents for a career at Siemens. Next came a series of different international posts in innovation, collaboration management, research and development (R&D), and market development at Siemens Healthineers, focusing on medical imaging solutions. He spent time working in France, Singapore, and Japan as well as Germany. Dahmani now leads the Technology & Innovation department at the Mechatronic Products division. He and his team of eight conduct research in a number of areas, including robot-assisted solutions for hospital workflows.
Robotics in Healthcare: Triumphs, Trials, and the Road Ahead
In this talk, we will explore the transformative impact of robotics in healthcare, highlighting its most significant achievements, notable failures, and the challenges that lie ahead. From surgical robots revolutionizing precision in the operating room to robotic exoskeletons aiding in-patient rehabilitation, we will delve into the innovations that have reshaped medical practices. We will also examine the setbacks and limitations faced by these technologies, providing a balanced view of their current state. Finally, we will discuss the future challenges and opportunities for robotics in healthcare, envisioning a path towards more advanced and integrated solutions.
Hightech Summit Session: Future Medical Robotics
Magnetic fields offer the possibility of manipulating objects from a distance and are ideal for medical applications, as they penetrate human tissue without inflicting any harm on the patient. Magnetic fields can be harnessed to actuate surgical robots, enhancing the capabilities of surgeons in reaching deep into the human anatomy through complex winding pathways, thus providing minimally invasive access to organs that are out of reach with current technologies. In this talk, we will explore various robotic architectures based on magnetic control, specifically designed for lifesaving clinical applications.
Pietro Valdastri is Full Professor and Chair in Robotics and Autonomous Systems at the University of Leeds. He directs the Science and Technologies Of Robotics in Medicine (STORM) Lab, focusing on intelligent robots to fight cancer, the Institute of Robotics, Autonomous System and Sensing (IRASS), and the Robotics at Leeds network. He received his Laurea degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Pisa in 2001 and his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in 2006. After the PhD, he became Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the BioRobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna. In 2011, Prof Valdastri moved to Vanderbilt University as an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering until 2016, when he relocated to Leeds.
He has published more than 150 peer reviewed journal papers in the field of medical robotics and has been principal investigator on grants in excess of $24M supported by NSF, NIH, ERC, EU-H2020, Cancer Research UK, The Royal Society, EPSRC, ARIA, Innovate UK and industry, including the NSF CAREER Award with the proposal “Lifesaving Capsule Robots” in 2015, the ERC Consolidator Grant Award with the proposal “NoLiMiTs – Novel Lifesaving Magnetic Tentacles” in 2019, and the KUKA Innovation Award for his robotic colonoscopy platform in 2019. Prof. Valdastri is a Royal Society Wolfson Research Fellow, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Editor for Medical and Rehabilitation Robotics of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, and a member of the steering committee of the International Society for Medical Innovation and Technology (iSMIT). STORM Lab’s research has been featured by several news outlets, including the BBC, The Times, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, Bloomberg, New Scientist, The Spectator, WIRED, IEEE Spectrum, Medgadget, Daily Mail, The Engineer, Ingenia Magazine, Medical Design Technology Magazine, Medical Xpress, Newswise, NSF Science Now. Prof Valdastri also completed a successful entrepreneurial cycle with WinMedical s.r.l., a company he co-founded in 2009 and that was acquired by a larger enterprise in 2017. He recently started a new company, Atlas Endoscopy Limited, to bring his robotic colonoscopy platform to patients.
Lifesaving soft magnetic surgical robots
Magnetic fields offer the possibility of manipulating objects from a distance and are ideal for medical applications, as they penetrate human tissue without inflicting any harm on the patient. Magnetic fields can be harnessed to actuate surgical robots, enhancing the capabilities of surgeons in reaching deep into the human anatomy through complex winding pathways, thus providing minimally invasive access to organs that are out of reach with current technologies. In this talk, we will explore various robotic architectures based on magnetic control, specifically designed for lifesaving clinical applications.
Hightech Summit Session: Future Medical Robotics
Session Chair
"Future Medical Robotics" will be hosted by Session Chair Prof. Dr-Ing. Tamim Asfour, Professor at the Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics of the Karlruher Institut of Technology (KIT), where he holds the chair of Humanoid Robotics Systems and is head of the High Performance Humanoid Technologies Lab (H2T).
Session Chair
"Future Medical Robotics" will be hosted by Co-Chair Prof. Cristina Piazza, Assistant Professor at the Chair of Computer Aided Medical Procedures (TU Munich).
Technologies have the potential to assist humans and improve our quality of life. However, it is essential to design technologies with a focus on the benefits for the many, and not the few. Question of social justice and equity need to move to the center of technology development, particularly in fields such as AI and robotics. To this end, we must foster interdisciplinary collaborations between the social sciences and AI research and address social, ethical and political questions in an integrated way already during technology development.