The Operating Theatre Journal - Flipbook - Page 27
EnAcuity to develop visualisation technology
for minimally invasive surgery
This is not only about deploying advanced AI but also
creating better outcomes for patients. We’re proud
to support EnAcuity and to collaborate with UCL and
commercial partners to help make the company a
success.
Dr Simon Hepworth Director of Enterprise, Imperial College London
Professor Stoyanov said: “Extending surgical visualisation beyond the
limits of the human eye can be transformational in enhancing patient
treatment. This venture to translate work from the UK’s leading surgical
technology centres into a clinical system embodies our mission to bring
foundational research to the bene昀椀t of patients.”
Commercialisation success
The company’s pre-seed funding was welcomed by commercialisation
experts at the two universities.
EnAcuity founders Dr Tobias Czempiel and Dr Maria Leiloglou
© Imperial College London
A new spinout company from Imperial and UCL has received preseed funding to develop AI technology that could aid laparoscopic
surgery.
EnAcuity’s technology could help surgeons carry out laparoscopies more
safely and effectively by highlighting functional information in the body
that is hard for the eye to detect.
The company’s technology could enable surgeons
to perform the laparoscopies more precisely by
displaying functional information that is undetectable
to the naked eye.
UCLB Senior Business Manager, Physical Sciences and Engineering,
Dr Weng Sie Wong, said: “It’s been exciting to be involved in the
commercialisation process of EnAcuity from the outset from supporting
the team with IP protection to completion of the funding round.”
Dr Simon Hepworth, Director of Enterprise at Imperial College London,
said: “My congratulations to the EnAcuity team for reaching this
important milestone. This is not only about deploying advanced AI
technology but also targeting important clinical needs and ultimately
creating better outcomes for patients. We’re proud to support EnAcuity
and to collaborate with UCL and commercial partners to help make the
company a success.” © Imperial College London
Author: David Silverman February 2024
Laparoscopies are a form of minimally invasive surgery performed on
the abdomen using small incisions and a thin tube with a video camera
that shows the surgeon what is going on inside the patient’s body.
Traditionally, the cameras reproduce on screen what the surgeon would
see for themselves if they were performing open surgery.
The company’s technology could transform laparoscopic surgery and
enable surgeons to perform the procedures more precisely by displaying
functional information that is undetectable to the naked eye.
EnAcuity’s co-founder and CEO Dr Maria Leiloglou, who is also an
honorary research fellow at UCL and Imperial, said: “Surgeons have
dif昀椀culty detecting some pathologies such as cancer and surgical
structures of interest such as vessels and nerves, partly because the
human eye is not sensitive enough to pick up on the subtle colour
differences that distinguish them. By providing more information, our
solution could mark a signi昀椀cant advancement in the 昀椀eld of minimally
invasive surgery.”
EnAcuity’s technology could also provide an alternative to hyperspectral
imaging devices, which are better at discriminating colours than
the human visual system but have drawbacks. Dr Leiloglou said that
their disadvantages include being bulky, causing delays in surgical
procedures, and compromising the overall image quality.
EnAcuity’s solution pairs cameras already used in the operating theatre,
with AI computer vision models trained to recognise tissue structures
and pathologies, which it then highlights on screen for the surgeon.
Academic expertise
The company builds on years of research at Imperial and UCL and has
received entrepreneurship support from Imperial’s WE Innovate and the
Wellcome Trust Hamlyn Accelerator for Surgical Innovation programmes.
Its founding team includes Professor Daniel Elson in Imperial’s Hamlyn
Centre for Robotic Surgery and Department of Surgery and Cancer,
Professor Danail Stoyanov, Director of UCL’s Wellcome / EPSRC Centre
for Interventional and Surgical Sciences (WEISS) and Department of
Computer Science, and Dr Tobias Czempiel, Chief Technology Of昀椀cer,
a PhD graduate from TU Munich with extensive experience in surgical
data science who holds honorary research fellowships at Imperial and
UCL.
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Issue 401
February
2024
27