Stefanie Speidel

AI in surgery

Surgical assistance systems

Stefanie Speidel is a computer scientist and heads the Department of Translational Surgical Oncology at the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT Dresden) and the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Dresden. Her research focuses on the interface between robotics, computer science, and medicine.

Speidel focuses primarily on computer- and robot-assisted surgical technologies. These are designed to optimize medical procedures, for example, by automatically providing additional information during an operation, such as 3D images of an organ, recommendations for incision planning, and alerts regarding adjacent vessels that must not be damaged. Furthermore, individual tasks, such as cutting or tying knots, are partially automated at the robotic level to enable effective human-machine interaction. Her goal is to develop a surgical guidance system that guides surgeons through an operation with a level of reliability comparable to a navigation system in automotive applications.

This requires real-time acquisition of medical data and the integration of pre-existing information. To this end, Speidel uses innovative AI methods, robotics, and advanced sensor technologies. With her interdisciplinary team, she also develops training systems, such as virtual reality-based environments, in which surgical teams can prepare in advance for particularly complex procedures or early-career surgeons can systematically train their technical skills.

Stefanie Speidel received her doctorate in computer science from the University of Karlsruhe in 2009 and is now the founding director of the DKFZ site in Dresden. There, she heads the Department of Translational Surgical Oncology at the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT). Speidel is also a professor at TU Dresden and co-spokesperson for the CeTI Cluster of Excellence. She has received numerous awards for her research and teaching.