(Rhys Hibbert. Photo by BBc)
A man has become the first patient ever to have brain surgery with artificial intelligence helping the surgeons.
Rhys Hibbert, a 48-year-old from Bedfordshire, had a tumour removed from the base of his brain with the help of an AI system that watched the surgery live and guided the doctors.
Hibbert was a fit and healthy customer services manager until eighteen months ago when he fell unconscious while on his usual two-mile lunchtime walk.
Scans showed he had a non-cancerous tumour growing on his pituitary gland, a marble-sized organ at the base of the skull.
The tumour was pressing on his optic nerves and narrowing his vision.
Over time, he began tripping over things and felt severely fatigued and dizzy.
Though he didn’t need immediate surgery, his condition was getting worse.
When surgeons offered him the chance to be the first person to try their AI-assisted surgery, he accepted.
The operation involved inserting a thin camera through the nose to reach the tumour.
The tricky part was that the tumour sat hidden behind bone and tough membrane, very close to crucial blood vessels and nerves.
Normally there is a 25 to 50 percent chance surgeons might not remove all the tumour, and a small risk of damaging a major blood vessel.
This is where the AI came in.
Working like a super-powered second pair of eyes, it analysed the live video feed during surgery, tracked the surgical instruments and highlighted where the blood vessels and nerves were most likely hiding.
It marked the safest areas for the surgeons to remove the tumour.
The AI was trained on hundreds of videos of similar surgeries and recognises important anatomical structures the way facial recognition software on phones recognises faces.
An average surgeon performs only 10 to 20 of these operations a year, but the AI has learned from far more.
The operation went well. When Hibbert opened his eyes afterwards, he said he could see clearly again for the first time in a year.
In the eight weeks since surgery, his vision has kept improving and his energy has returned. He said the surgery has given him his life back.
