Artificial Intelligence in Spine Surgery

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an aspiring new technology that bears a vast number of possibilities to facilitate patients’ care and to revolutionize current medical care. Especially in the complex field of spine surgery, in which treatment depends on a large number of variables, AI finds growing interest. The use of AI in spine surgery can be subdivided into preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative field. In the preoperative field, AI is able to support different diagnostic steps. Therefore, various algorithms have been developed to facilitate the processing of patients’ radiological data, to limit radiation exposure, and to automatically analyze these images. In the intraoperative field, AI allows support in different surgical steps, especially in combination with other computer-aided technologies such as augmented reality (AR) or robotics. This allows for improved surgical accuracy as well as enhanced treatment consistency. In the postoperative field, AI helps to predict the postoperative outcome and to screen for patients who are possibly prone to complications. This supports clinicians in counseling patients as well as in tailoring individual treatment strategies. In this book chapter, these current possible applications of AI in spine care are summarized and discussed.