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The first use of artificial intelligence to support a neurosurgeon in real time during live surgery has protected the sight of a man having a brain tumour removed, in a UCL-UCLH collaboration. The operation was carried out at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (NHNN), University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, as part of a clinical trial using AI technology developed in-house at UCL and funded by the NIHR (National Institute for Health and Care Research). Rhys Hibbert, 48, is the first patient to have surgery in this way. Without surgery, Rhys’s tumour would have continued to threaten his sight and could ultimately have led to blindness. The operation successfully removed the tumour and protected his vision. During his operation, the UCL-developed AI analysed the live surgical video feed in real time, rather than using pre-surgery scans, to help the surgical team make more precise decisions by highlighting critical structures at the base of the brain. In this part of the brain, the pituitary gland (the size of a marble), blood vessels and nerves controlling vision are tightly packed together, and going a millimetre wrong can make a critical difference and lead to death, blindness or stroke. The AI supported the surgical team helping identify risky areas to avoid while removing as much tumour as safely possible. Mr Hani Marcus, professor of neurosurgery at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology and consultant neurosurgeon at the NHNN, performed this first AI assisted surgery alongside Mr Danyal Khan, a UCL PhD candidate and UCL/UCLH neurosurgical resident leading the work. The AI system was developed at the UCL Hawkes Institute, a multidisciplinary research group at UCL focused on advancing healthcare technologies. Researchers led by Dr Sophia Bano of UCL Computer Science trained and evaluated the system using a large collection of annotated endoscopic pituitary surgery videos from previous operations. The technology has previously been evaluated and used as a training tool for surgeons carrying out this procedure. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eH68bYGX UCL Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL Engineering