Virtual Surgery

Dr. Richard Satava, US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, believes that a realistic future improvement in surgery is “virtual surgery”. His definition of this term is a surgical process that involves the following steps:

• Patient is scanned with MRI to create an accurate digital model of their body and internal organs.
• The surgeon operates on this virtual model until he/she arrives at a perfect procedure that is best for this patient. The surgery procedures can be edited just as you would edit a Word document until you remove all errors.
• Upload the surgery to a robot that can follow the surgery file exactly. This is similar to a manufacturing robot which can cut metal parts more accurately than a human.
• Let the robot perform the surgery under the observation of a surgeon who can override if necessary.