Role of artificial intelligence in head, neck, and brain surgery: Transforming diagnosis, planning, and precision therapy

• Author Details:   
• Kiran Ingole ^*
• Pankaj Khuspe
• Swapnil Phade
• Sitaram Kale
• Dipali Mane

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is set to transform the world in the field of head, neck and brain surgery by providing its exponential utilities in terms of diagnosis, preoperative planning, intraoperative accuracy and intraoperative functionalities and postoperative management. As the anatomy of the craniofacial region is becoming more and more complicated and neurovascular structures are getting more and more crucial, new AI-powered technologies are becoming the important pillars in enhancing the accurateness of surgical procedures and patient outcomes. The current review provides evidence of the versatile utility of AI in many fields, such as radiological diagnosis, robot-aided surgery, cancer management, or neurorehabilitation. The use of advanced imaging algorithms based on AI has greatly improved the identification and the definition of anatomical anomalies, tumor borders, perineural involvement, and vascular deviations. Specifically, deep learning types of segmentation models can be used to identify important structures, including the cranial nerves, skull base orifices, and brainstem nuclei with high accuracy, which can be useful in risk assessment before surgical operations. Machine learning applications also become helpful in the analysis of patient-specific clinical and radiologic data to predict the prognosis and treatment response and risk of progression in patients with oral cancers, brain tumors, thyroid malignancies, and vascular malformations. Other revolutionizing uses of AI are in real-time surgical guidance, robotic accuracy in cochlear implants and skull base resection, and virtual 3D preoperative planning with incidents of maxillofacial reconstructions. The AI-based monitoring systems and in-host devices are another factor in the optimization of the post-operative care process as they enable monitoring the recovery pathway and allow early detection of the complications, which is followed by the intervention. There is the incredible potential of integrating AI into the process of a surgical intervention in the head, neck, and brain in terms of the precision of medicine improvement, surgical learning, and improving morbidity. Nevertheless, continuous validation, ethics control, and the collaboration of different disciplines are more important to the extensive clinical implementation of it.