Chimaera at EAES 2025: AI-assisted surgery in European discourse
From June 17 to 20, 2025, the 33rd Annual Congress of the European Association for Endoscopic Surgery (EAES) took place at the Sava Centar in Belgrade. With an extensive program covering minimally invasive surgery, robot-assisted systems, AI applications, and surgical training and continuing education, the EAES Congress is one of the most important platforms for innovation in European endoscopic surgery.
Chimaera was present as part of the Surgical AI Hub Germany. The focus of our presentation was the current development status of the AI demonstrator with our proprietary software ImViA – a central component of the BMBF-funded research project on AI-supported intraoperative analysis and quality assurance.
What We Presented
By the time of the congress, the project had reached its halfway point – an ideal moment to present interim results and gather targeted feedback from the surgical community.
The AI demonstrator now enables the transformation of anonymized surgical videos into structured analytical workflows: from AI-supported annotation to the classification of surgical phases and the assessment of bimanual dexterity.
We also showcased an interactive prototype for the evaluation of surgical performance. This so-called click dummy served as a tool to collect initial user impressions and specific feedback from clinical practice. The insights gained will directly inform the second project phase and help to further align the system with the realities of everyday surgical work.
Where we contributed
Another key focus was the hands-on exchange during the AI Masterclass, an educational format within the EAES congress program. The session, led by Felix Nickel and Pietro Mascagni, explored practical use cases of AI in surgery. In addition to showcasing current systems, the discussion centered around methodological limitations and clinical requirements.
The accompanying Technology Corner offered further opportunities to address technical questions and explore potential pathways for integrating AI-based tools into established clinical workflows. Once again, the direct exchange with users from research and clinical practice underscored the value of application-driven prototyping.
What we take forward
The feedback and insights gathered at EAES provide an important foundation for the next phase of development. Our focus now lies on refining individual analytical modules, validating them with clinical datasets, and further developing the interaction design for surgical quality assessment.
We would like to thank all project partners, participants, and organizers for the open and constructive exchange – and we look forward to the next steps ahead.
This might also interest you:
ImViA Ecosystem: Web Application Ecosystem for Smart Image and Video Annotation, Analysis & AI
Surgical AI Hub Germany: Objective Measurement of Surgical Quality with Data-Centric Value Creation Network
Annotation Services: Professional data annotation services with our own experts and in-house software – when quality matters!
Dieter
Dr.-Ing. Dieter Hahn
Am Weichselgarten 7
91058 Erlangen
Germany
+49 (0)9131 - 691 385
+49 (0)9131 - 691 386
hahn(at)chimaera.de