Intraoperative surgery room management: A deep learning perspective

The current study aimed to systematically review the literature addressing the use of deep learning (DL) methods in intraoperative surgery applications, focusing on the data collection, the objectives of these tools and, more technically, the DL-based paradigms utilized.

A literature search with classic databases was performed: we identified, with the use of specific keywords, a total of 996 papers. Among them, we selected 52 for effective analysis, focusing on articles published after January 2015.

The preliminary results of the implementation of DL in clinical setting are encouraging. Almost all the surgery sub-fields have seen the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) applications and the results outperformed the previous techniques in the majority of the cases. From these results, a conceptualization of an intelligent operating room (IOR) is also presented.

This evaluation outlined how AI and, in particular, DL are revolutionizing the surgery field, with numerous applications, such as context detection and room management. This process is evolving years by years into the realization of an IOR, equipped with technologies perfectly suited to drastically improve the surgical workflow.