Artificial Intelligence in Cataract Surgery: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess the current use and reliability of artificial intelligence (AI)-based algorithms for analyzing cataract surgery videos.

Methods: A systematic review of the literature about intra-operative analysis of cataract surgery videos with machine learning techniques was performed. Cataract diagnosis and detection algorithms were excluded. Resulting algorithms were compared, descriptively analyzed, and metrics summarized or visually reported. The reproducibility and reliability of the methods and results were assessed using a modified version of the Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted (MICCAI) checklist.

Results: Thirty-eight of the 550 screened studies were included, 20 addressed the challenge of instrument detection or tracking, 9 focused on phase discrimination, and 8 predicted skill and complications. Instrument detection achieves an area under the receiver operator characteristic curve (ROC AUC) between 0.976 and 0.998, instrument tracking an mAP between 0.685 and 0.929, phase recognition an ROC AUC between 0.773 and 0.990, and complications or surgical skill performs with an ROC AUC between 0.570 and 0.970.

Conclusions: The studies showed a wide variation in quality and pose a challenge regarding replication due to a small number of public datasets (none for manual small incision cataract surgery) and seldom published source code. There is no standard for reported outcome metrics and validation of the models on external datasets is rare making comparisons difficult. The data suggests that tracking of instruments and phase detection work well but surgical skill and complication recognition remains a challenge for deep learning.

Translational relevance: This overview of cataract surgery analysis with AI models provides translational value for improving training of the clinician by identifying successes and challenges.

Figure 1.

Flowchart based on PRISMA 2020 diagram for new systematic reviews depicting the literature search on algorithms for analysis of cataract extraction surgery.

Figure 2.

Overview of the different cataract surgery analysis algorithms.

Figure 3.

Dataset overview with (A) detection labels from CATARACTS grand challenge and (B) segmentation of the CaDis subset.

Figure 4.

The 101-Cataracts dataset overview showing the different phases in cataract surgery.

Figure 5.

Spread of the results. Boxplots of the area (A) under the receiver operator characteristic curve (ROC AUC) for surgical phase, instrument detection, and surgical skill or risk assessment, and (B) instrument tracking results reported in mean average precision (mAP).