Towards Laparoscopic Visual AI: Development of a Visual Guidance System for Laparoscopic Surgical Palpation
Abstract
Currently; there are numerous obstacles to performing palpation during laparoscopic surgery. The laparoscopic interface does not allow access into a patient’s body anything other than the tools that are inserted through the trocars. Palpation is usually done with the surgeon’s hands to detect lumps and certain anomalies underneath the skin; muscle; or tissues. It can be useful technique for augmenting surgical decision-making during laparoscopic surgery; especially when discerning operations involving cancerous tumors. Previous research demonstrated the use of tactile sensors and mechanical sensors placed at the end-effectors for palpating laparoscopically. In this study; a visual guidance system is proposed for use during laparoscopic palpation; specifically engineered to be part of a motion-based laparoscopic palpation system. In particular; the YOLACT++ model is used to localize a target organ; the gall bladder; on a custom dataset of laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Our experiments showed an AP score of 90.10 for bounding boxes and 87.20 on masks. In terms of the speed performance; the model achieved a playback speed of approximately 20 fps; which translates to approximately 48 ms video latency. The palpation path guides are guidelines that are computer-generated within the identified organ; and they show potential in helping the surgeon implement the palpation more accurately. Overall; this study demonstrates the potential of deep learning-based real-time image processing models to complete our motion-based laparoscopic palpation system; and to realize the promising role of artificial intelligence in surgical decision-making. Visual presentation of our results can be seen on our project page: https://kerwincaballas.github.io/lap- palpation.