Research trends and hotspots in robot-assisted ophthalmic surgery: a bibliometric and visualization study

Robot-assisted ophthalmic surgery has undergone rapid development in recent decades. Robot-assisted ophthalmic surgery, as examined through bibliometric and visual mapping, has its global research status, historical evolution, hotspots, and future trends systematically characterized in this study. Publications related to robot-assisted ophthalmic surgery covered three decades and sourced from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC). After screening, 234 articles and reviews were retained. Microsoft Excel 2019, VOSviewer, Scimago Graphica, CiteSpace, R software and the Bibliometrix package (R) served to analyze the authors, countries/regions, institutions, journals, keywords, references, and co-citation networks. The results demonstrated a sustained increase in annual publications, with the United States and China as the top contributors and Johns Hopkins University as the most productive institution. Co-citation analysis indicated that the intellectual base of the field is primarily centered on the technical feasibility, performance evaluation, and clinical translation of robotic ophthalmic surgery. Keyword and timeline analyses revealed three developmental stages: technology introduction, clinical validation, and intelligent technological development. Current researchers are more focused on subretinal injection, gene therapy, compliance control, and artificial intelligence. Future research should prioritize large-scale multicenter validation, multidisciplinary technological integration, and long-term follow-up promote the safe and widespread clinical adoption of robot-assisted ophthalmic surgery.