Application of AI in Endoscopic Surgical Operations

Artificial intelligence (AI) is already part of our everyday life. Nowadays, facial recognition and autonomous driving are common applications of AI. It has now gone on to invade the field of medicine, and many studies showed promising applications of AI in radiology, pathology, endoscopy, and so on. Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a disruptive innovation in all areas of medicine including surgery. Not only has it been applied for research purpose but also AI can already provide significant solutions in clinical settings. Attention is now turning to the potential of AI in the field of endoscopic surgery. It is essential to understand how machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) work, understand current applications in surgery, and prepare for the future of surgery in the era of AI. In the fields of medicine that rely mainly on pattern recognition, such as endoscopy and radiology, have evolved artificial intelligence models that have become more accurate than human decisions. To date, usefulness of artificial intelligence in the endoscopic diagnosis of gastrointestinal lesions is reported from many institutions. Progress in computing technology including the use of graphical processing units (GPUs) for parallel processing, the accessibility of types of movie data, and the resurgence of interest in neural networks, and other ML approaches has led to recent advances in AI application in endoscopic surgery. In this chapter, we present the current and future applications of AI in the field of endoscopic surgery by highlighting following topics in order: (1) diagnosis, (2) navigation, (3) decision support, (4) preoperative prediction, (5) education, (6) video recognition, and (7) autonomous surgery.