Surgical Data Science: Fiona Kolbinger starts new research group in Dresden

In October, clinician scientist Dr. Fiona Kolbinger will establish her research group “Surgical Data Science” at the TUD Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Dresden. Together with her team, she will develop AI-based methods for surgery and interventional medicine, focusing on clinically relevant use cases. The group will be based at the Department of Visceral, Thoracic and Vascular Surgery (VTG) and closely linked to the Else Kröner Fresenius Center (EKFZ) for Digital Health at the TUD Faculty of Medicine.

Developing AI tools to assist and improve surgeries

Fiona Kolbinger’s research group works at the intersection of medicine, specifically surgery and interventional medicine, and data science. With her team she develops computational tools to support clinical decision-making, quality assurance and patient care. Two focus areas are preoperative decision support and intraoperative quality assurance. By combining technical expertise with clinical knowledge, the team aims to contribute to the translation of AI-assisted systems into clinical care.

GRAIL: AI for surgical video analysis

One of her central projects is GRAIL: Generalizable and Clinically Relevant AI Approaches for Surgical Video Analysis in Real-World Healthcare Settings, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) through the Zukunft eHealth program with almost €2.5 million over five years. Until now, AI methods for surgical video analysis have mostly been developed and evaluated under controlled laboratory conditions. GRAIL instead focuses on developing methods that also perform reliably in real-world settings and address clinically relevant questions. The project aims to contribute to surgical quality assurance and, in the longer term, to the regulatory-compliant integration of AI-based methods into clinical practice.

Returning to Dresden from the US

For Fiona Kolbinger, establishing the new group also marks a return to Dresden. She has been part of TUD for general surgery residency and a PhD in Surgical Data Science before joining Purdue University’s Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering in the United States as a Research Assistant Professor in 2023. At Purdue University, she established an independent interdisciplinary research group that will join her transition to Dresden. Before completing her PhD in Dresden, she studied medicine at Heidelberg University and conducted research at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and MD Anderson Cancer Center in the United States. Her work combines clinical expertise in general surgery with interdisciplinary research in data science and AI.

Fiona Kolbinger: “I am very happy to be back in Dresden. The strong interdisciplinary environment across the Dresden University Medicine campus, in particular the Department of Visceral, Thoracic and Vascular Surgery and the EKFZ for Digital Health, provides excellent conditions for developing AI methods that address relevant clinical needs and ultimately improve patient care.”

Contact
Anne-Stephanie Vetter
Staff Unit Public Relations of the Carl Gustav Carus Faculty of Medicine
of TUD Dresden University of Technology
+49 (0) 351 458 17903