Li W, Liu JT, Chen L, Cheng P, Zhang KC. Computer vision in laparoscopic gastrointestinal surgery: A review of anatomical recognition and clinical navigation. Artif Intell Gastroenterol 2026; 7(3): 125028 [DOI: 10.35712/aig.125028]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Ke-Cheng Zhang, PhD, Professor, Department of General Surgery, The First Medical Center, Chinese PLA General Hospital, No. 28 Fuxing Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100853, China. zhangkecheng@301hospital.com.cn
Research Domain of This Article
Surgery
Article-Type of This Article
review-article
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Artif Intell Gastroenterol. Nov 8, 2026; 7(3): 125028 Published online Nov 8, 2026. doi: 10.35712/aig.125028
Computer vision in laparoscopic gastrointestinal surgery: A review of anatomical recognition and clinical navigation
Wen Li, Jia-Tong Liu, Lin Chen, Ping Cheng, Ke-Cheng Zhang
Wen Li, Jia-Tong Liu, Ping Cheng, School of Medicine, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China
Wen Li, Ping Cheng, Senior Department of General Surgery, First Medical Center, General Hospital of the PLA, Beijing 100853, China
Lin Chen, Senior Department of General Surgery, Peking University international Hospital, Beijing 100089, China
Ke-Cheng Zhang, Department of General Surgery, The First Medical Center, Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing 100853, China
Co-first authors: Wen Li and Jia-Tong Liu.
Author contributions: Li W and Liu JT performed literature retrieval and collation, manuscript writing and revision; Cheng P conducted literature retrieval and manuscript writing; Zhang KC and Chen L contributed to study design, manuscript revision and final approval.
AI contribution statement: Portions of this manuscript were edited using AI tools solely for language refinement. The authors carefully reviewed and verified all AI-assisted outputs and take full responsibility for the scientific content of the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest to disclose.
Corresponding author: Ke-Cheng Zhang, PhD, Professor, Department of General Surgery, The First Medical Center, Chinese PLA General Hospital, No. 28 Fuxing Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100853, China. zhangkecheng@301hospital.com.cn
Received: July 1, 2026 Revised: August 23, 2026 Accepted: September 18, 2026 Published online: November 8, 2026 Processing time: 128 Days and 14.3 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: Computer vision is advancing laparoscopic gastrointestinal surgery from two dimensional image recognition toward real-time anatomical navigation and context-aware assistance. This review summarizes progress in surgical phase recognition, visual enhancement, critical-structure identification, three dimensional and augmented-reality navigation, and robotic integration, while emphasizing the gap between technical performance and demonstrated clinical benefit. Key priorities include multicenter validation, procedure-specific datasets, privacy-preserving learning, human-artificial intelligence collaboration, and prospective evaluation of surgeon-, procedure-, and patient-centered outcomes. Semi-autonomous functions should remain under surgeon oversight.
