Deep Neural Networks Predict Remaining Surgery Duration from Cholecystectomy Videos

For every hospital, it is desirable to fully utilize its operating room (OR) capacity. Inaccurate planning of OR occupancy impacts patient comfort, safety and financial turnover of the hospital. A source of suboptimal scheduling often lies in the incorrect estimation of the surgery duration, which may vary significantly due to the diversity of patient conditions, surgeon skills and intraoperative situations. We propose automatic methods to estimate the remaining surgery duration in real-time by using only the image feed from the endoscopic camera and no other sensor. These approaches are based on neural networks designed to learn the workflow of an endoscopic procedure. We train and evaluate our models on a large dataset of 120 endoscopic cholecystectomies. Results show the strong benefits of these approaches when surgeries last longer than usual and promise practical improvements in OR management.