XMARCUS: A Pathway Towards Remote Robotic Surgery Coaching

Abstract

XMARCUS: A Pathway Towards Remote Robotic Surgery Training}, is a compilation work of human-robot, human-artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction. The thesis provides a technical overview of the history of robotic surgery, present innovation, and future impacts. We present a behaviorist overview and describe our view of the overall direction of robotic surgery to enhance surgical training. We also discuss application towards future directions of translational medicine, adoption of surgical tools, and innovation within medicine. XMARCUS indicates the possibility of another artificial intelligence winter within surgery domain and presents a direction towards surgical training. Our macroscopic perspective and development of demo applications on third-party consoles demonstrates how to enhance robotic surgery training, provide future directions of minimally invasive surgery, and further enhance medical education. We also present the argument for a definitive direction of applications of artificial intelligence, the breakdown of its very definition, along with its proper application, in order to connect both the surgical and software communities for further steps in translational medicine. XMARCUS is not only a pathway towards applicable accessibility for surgical training, but also is a framework to allow further innovation in translational medicine for robotic surgery. The thesis consists of 14 chapters divided into 3 parts. Part 1 provides a technical history background focused on the history of robotic surgery, the present hardware breakdown, applications and advancement of artificial intelligence and computer vision practices within the field. Part 2 highlights the disconnect between both surgical and software communities, and a pathway to integrating both fields towards translational medicine, specifically focusing on artificial intelligent practices by integrating machine learning for computer vision in the endoscopic space. Part 3 presents future research directions and important research questions to address, highlighting the future of surgery with the lack of physician accessibility to implementing artificial intelligence practices, focuses on providing an integration of remote robotic surgery training.