TRR 125:  Cognition-Guided Surgery

• Subject Area: Medicine ; Computer Science, Systems and Electrical Engineering ; Mathematics
• Term: from 2012 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 211469636

The aim of the Transregional Collaborative Research Centre is to create a technical, cognitive system to support the surgeon. It will act in a similar way to a human assistant while permanently retaining vital knowledge to be transferred, accumulated and reused for future operations. The system will be able to amass and combine preoperative, perioperative and postoperative information and interpret it through a knowledge base. It will continuously follow the operational procedure and gather relevant information (perception). Furthermore, it will be able to incorporate both factual and practical knowledge ("knowledge base") and use this information to assess the current situation (interpretation), recommending, when necessary, an appropriate course of action (action). This could, for example, be to simulate a suggestion for a liver resection, or to visualise the individual risk and target structures to ensure the safe performance of the next stage of the operation. All research partners will draw on their vast professional expertise to realise the aim of the Transregional Collaborative Research Centre. Furthermore, established collaborations will be utilised and optimised to achieve maximal synergistic effects.

• DFG Programme: CRC/Transregios

Completed projects

• A01 - The context-aware operating room in the surgical treatment process in minimally invasive visceral surgery (Project Heads Kenngott, Hannes Götz ;  Speidel, Stefanie )
• A02 - Knowledge-based liver surgery (Project Heads Maier-Hein, Lena ;  Mehrabi, Arianeb )
• B01 - Knowledge-based reconstructive mitral valve surgery (Project Heads De Simone, Ph.D., Raffaele ;  Wolf, Ivo )
• C01 - Adaptive Photon Therapy in the Treatment of Lung and Liver Tumors (Project Heads Bendl, Rolf ;  Combs, Stephanie ;  Jäkel, Oliver ;  Oelfke, Uwe ;  Sterzing, Florian )
• C02 - Biological and Time Adaptive Therapy of Pancreatic Carcinoma (Project Heads Bendl, Rolf ;  Debus, Jürgen ;  Jäkel, Oliver ;  Oelfke, Uwe )
• I01 - Knowledge modeling, interpretation and learning (Project Heads Asfour, Tamim ;  Dillmann, Rüdiger ;  Sure-Vetter, York )
• I02 - Knowledge-Based Segmentation (Project Head Maier-Hein, Klaus )
• I03 - Functional modeling and numerical simulation (Project Head Heuveline, Vincent )
• I04 - Knowledge-based multispectral tissue characterization (Project Head Maier-Hein, Klaus )
• I05 - Cognitive surgical robotics (Project Heads Müller-Stich, Beat Peter ;  Wörn, Heinz )
• R01 - MR-fingerprinting of the abdomen (Project Heads Hackert, Thilo ;  Klauß, Miriam ;  Laun, Frederik B. )
• R02 - Functional dual-energy CT-imaging of abdominal organs (Project Heads Hackert, Thilo ;  Kauczor, Hans-Ulrich ;  Stiller, Wolfram )
• R03 - 4D Imaging of Blood Flow and Movement (Project Heads Beller, Carsten ;  Müller-Eschner, Matthias ;  Rengier, Fabian ;  von Tengg-Kobligk, Hendrik )
• S01 - Software Infrastructure (Project Head Nolden, Marco )
• Z01 - Central Administration (Project Head Büchler, Markus W. )

• Applicant Institution: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
• Co-Applicant Institution: Karlsruher Institut für Technologie
• Participating Institution: Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (DKFZ)
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Markus W. Büchler