Theator Takes the Gold in Critical View of Safety Challenge at MICCAI 2024

Jordan on December 5, 2024

SAGES Critical View of Safety Challenge

A leading organization in surgical innovation, the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES), challenged industry and academics alike to test their algorithms on 1,000 surgical videos from a SAGES-curated dataset. The challenge was centered around the automatic identification of a surgical best practice, Critical View of Safety (CVS), in cholecystectomy procedures. (CVS) Challenge? Accepted. 

SAGES CVS Challenge Winner

Theator won first place in the global competition for best overall performance, highlighting Theator’s best-in-class and cutting-edge AI technology. In this competition, Theator beat out 12 other participants, including industry leaders and academic participants, such as Stanford University. This exciting accomplishment was announced at the Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention Society (MICCAI) conference in October 2024.

Critical View of Safety: Explained

It is widely published in literature and agreed upon by surgeons that achieving CVS greatly reduces the risk of a bile duct injury during gallbladder removal surgery, which is a devastating complication for patients. After identification of the CVS, surgeons can safely proceed with the procedure with reduced risk of complication. Successfully identifying the CVS requires three components to be viewed by the surgeon to achieve CVS: 

    1. Two and only two tubular structures are seen connected to the gallbladder
    2. The hepatocystic triangle is cleared from fat and connective tissue so that an unimpeded view is obtained
    3. The lower part of the gallbladder is dissected off the liver bed to expose the lower ⅓ of the cystic plate

Leveraging advanced computer vision technology, all three components can be identified and analyzed to determine whether or not CVS was achieved. In looking at a subset of our own dataset, we found that (spoiler, alert), CVS was achieved far less often than what you’d expect.