Theator Takes the Gold in the First of its Kind Critical View of Safety Challenge at MICCAI 2024, Demonstrating Excellence in AI-Driven Surgical Safety
Theator’s advanced AI technology sets a new standard in surgical safety, outperforming competitors in the SAGES CVS Challenge and showcasing its commitment to transparency and innovation.
PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 5, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Theator Inc., a leader in AI-driven surgical intelligence, has won the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) Critical View of Safety (CVS) Challenge at the prestigious MICCAI 2024 conference. In addition to winning the overall challenge, Theator excelled in the subchallenges, securing first place in the Uncertainty Quantification subchallenge and second in CVS Classification and Robustness. Theator’s success in this rigorous competition, which included industry and leading academic centers such as Stanford, highlights the company’s cutting-edge AI and its dedication to advancing surgical safety and transparency in medical technology.
SAGES, a leading surgical society whose mission is to innovate, educate, and collaborate to improve patient care, created the world’s first global competition focused on the computational assessment of the Critical View of Safety during laparoscopic cholecystectomy, a widely performed minimally invasive procedure for gallbladder removal. Recognized as an international safety standard, the CVS was initially proposed in 2010 and adopted by leading professional societies such as SAGES. Achieving the CVS has been shown to mitigate the risk of bile duct injuries significantly, one of the most severe complications in gallbladder surgeries. This challenge required participants to train AI algorithms to accurately assess the CVS visual criteria, enhancing surgeons’ decision-making capacity and overall surgical safety.
Theator’s proprietary AI technology, recognized for its unique ability to capture and analyze minimally invasive surgical (MIS) videos, excelled in the challenge due to its precise CVS criteria detection and robust uncertainty quantification. Theator’s solutions were tested on a globally diverse dataset of 1,000 annotated laparoscopic cholecystectomy videos, reflecting real-world complexities across various demographics, surgical techniques, and equipment.
“Understanding and applying the critical view of safety is arguably the single most important strategy surgeons can employ to enhance the safety of laparoscopic cholecystectomy and reduce the risk of bile duct injury,” said Dr. Michael Brunt, past President of SAGES, Professor of Surgery and Co-Director, Washington University Institute for Minimally Invasive Surgery, and a pioneer in the field of MIS. Notably, Dr. Brunt is one of the original architects of CVS. “As technology evolves, modalities like artificial intelligence have the potential to provide real-time feedback to surgeons about achieving the CVS and further add a safety element to this common operation. The recent CVS AI challenge held by SAGES that involved industry and academic institutions testing their CVS identification ability moves the needle further in this direction. Congratulations to Theator on achieving 1st place overall in the competition across a diverse array of images and clinical scenarios by ranking highly in every subcategory of the challenge. While much work is yet to be done, this important step will set the stage for real-world clinical applications with potential future benefits to the surgical community and for our patients. We look forward to continued collaborations between AI partners, surgical societies, and surgeons in this exciting new era.”
“Winning this challenge is a testament to our team’s relentless pursuit of excellence in AI-driven surgical intelligence. Our commitment to transparency in AI technology is vital for building trust in the medical community,” said Dotan Asselmann, Co-founder and CTO of Theator. “We also want to congratulate the second and third-place winners, the German Cancer Research Center and Stanford University. We are deeply grateful to SAGES for organizing this challenge and advancing the development of AI technologies that will make surgery safer worldwide.”
Leveraging AI technology to advance surgical care is becoming increasingly prevalent and is poised to address significant unmet needs in the field. Theator’s achievements in the CVS Challenge underscore its leadership in applying AI to surgery, reflecting its vast and unique MIS dataset. CVS is one of numerous best practices in various specialties that are visually identifiable using Theator’s technology, allowing for safer surgery. Combining world-class AI models with comprehensive surgical data from tens of thousands of cases, Theator is poised to continue delivering actionable insights that improve patient outcomes, support surgical decision-making, and reduce procedural variability.
About Theator
Theator is transforming surgical care through its AI-powered Surgical Intelligence Platform, enhancing quality, safety, and efficiency across health systems. By standardizing surgical video capture and analysis with advanced computer vision and AI, Theator provides much-needed actionable visibility at scale to impact quality, safety, operational efficiency, education, and documentation workflows.
For surgeons, this means continuous improvement through data-driven insights and shared best practices. For health system leaders, the platform surfaces variability and enables standardization of care, reducing operational inefficiencies while improving quality metrics. For patients, the platform ensures equitable, high-quality care regardless of geography.
Theator is committed to addressing disparities in surgical outcomes, advancing the standard of care, and creating a transparent, more data-driven surgical ecosystem. Based in Palo Alto, California, Theator partners with leading healthcare systems, professional societies, and research institutions to pave the way for better healthcare outcomes worldwide.
Discover more at theator.io.
Media Contact:
Theator, Inc.
Natalie Holger
Email: natalie@theator.io
Phone: +1 (937) 901-6459
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