Infervision Launches AI-Powered Surgical Robot 'Long Dian Jing' to Pioneer Precision Therapy

Recently, Infervision, a leading unicorn in the AI healthcare industry, announced its AI surgical robot, “Long Dianjing”^®“Puncture Surgical Robot”^﹡Achieved a major breakthrough in R&D, entered the field of precision therapy, and made significant strides into clinical treatment.

Infervision Enters the Surgical Robotics Arena with Percutaneous Puncture Technology. Clinically, percutaneous radiofrequency ablation is commonly used to treat patients with poor cardiopulmonary function, advanced age, or those who are not candidates for laparoscopic surgery, particularly those with small and multiple lesions. This approach allows physicians to perform procedures without making surgical incisions, leaving only a tiny needle puncture on the patient’s skin. It significantly accelerates postoperative recovery, making surgical treatment more viable for elderly patients. Furthermore, this type of procedure maximizes the preservation of surrounding healthy tissues, truly achieving “scarless” therapy.

The safety, accuracy, and assessment of ablation efficacy in percutaneous radiofrequency ablation (RFA) are currently the primary concerns for physicians in thoracic surgery, minimally invasive oncology, interventional radiology, and pulmonology. On one hand, because the lesion is located within the body, the “scarless” nature of the procedure renders it invisible and impalpable to surgeons, significantly increasing surgical difficulty. On the other hand, smaller incisions correlate with improved patient experience and postoperative management, driving clinicians to continuously seek superior surgical navigation and operative techniques.

For technology-driven healthcare companies engaged in robotics R&D, this contradiction presents both an opportunity and a challenge. If AI-enabled robots can address the technical pain points of percutaneous ablation, they could potentially spawn a market worth tens of billions of dollars.

In simple terms, Infervision’s rationale for entering the surgical robotics sector is to leverage artificial intelligence technology by integrating multidisciplinary fields—including magnetics, mechanics, electronics, control systems, software, and computing—to achieve fully automated identification of tissue lesions, automatic surgical path planning, puncture guidance, and ablation planning assessment. This approach assists physicians in accurately locating lesions, improving puncture precision, minimizing surgical trauma, shortening operative time, reducing intraoperative and postoperative complications, and decreasing the number of intraoperative CT scans and radiation exposure, thereby enabling doctors to perform percutaneous early-stage cancer ablation procedures more accurately and efficiently.

Based on this approach, we will build a product matrix and envision the pathway as three steps.

Typically, after physicians diagnose a lesion through examination, the next step is to develop a surgical plan to advance treatment. However, the navigation systems commonly available on the market generally generate only 2D images, offering limited guidance in surgical planning. They fail to accurately pinpoint the exact location of the lesion within the human body or reveal its spatial relationship with surrounding tissues and organs. Therefore, Infervision’s initial step was to leverage AI to create an intelligent, real-time, high-definition, three-dimensional preoperative planning system.

Leveraging its extensive accumulation of algorithmic technologies for the auxiliary diagnosis of early-stage diseases across multiple conditions and organs, Infervision possesses a natural advantage in developing intelligent surgical assistance systems. Taking lung cancer surgery as an example, the system can automatically perform functions such as fully automated segmentation of arteries and veins based on non-contrast CT data, lesion detection and analysis, surgical margin planning, and 3D reconstruction visualization. This enables physicians to precisely understand the trajectory of tumors and blood vessels, as well as their spatial relationships with bronchi, veins, and arteries, during preoperative planning.

The primary value of this system lies in providing precise lesion information to help physicians assess the patient’s condition more intuitively. Supported by three-dimensional and comprehensive data, clinicians can formulate surgical plans with greater precision, thereby enhancing the accuracy and safety of procedures and effectively reducing surgical complications and mortality rates.

Over the past few years, percutaneous puncture techniques have undergone three iterations—CT-guided puncture, optical navigation-guided puncture, and magnetic navigation-guided puncture—initially addressing the issue of intraoperative navigation and localization. However, due to the lack of intelligent tool support, preoperative preparation remains time-consuming, and manual identification by physicians is still required during surgery. Consequently, critical challenges persist, such as inaccurate visualization or failure to locate important anatomical structures or lesions.

Unlike traditional intraoperative navigation systems, Infervision’s AI-guided robotic system, “Longdianjing® Puncture Surgical Robot,” integrates AI-powered intelligent technology with magnetic navigation guidance. Empowered by intelligent algorithms, Infervision enables fully automatic identification and reconstruction of tissue lesions, followed by automated surgical path planning, puncture guidance, and post-ablation assessment, thereby effectively assisting physicians in performing percutaneous puncture procedures more accurately and efficiently.

It is understood that this innovative navigation technology offers multiple AI-enabled advantages:

1. Infervision’s AI algorithms can precisely identify and diagnose lesions, perform automatic 3D image segmentation and registration, and other advanced functions within minutes. They can adapt to various clinical emergencies and provide real-time recommendations to physicians.

2. Hepatobiliary tumors typically require preoperative MR imaging, while CT navigation is employed during surgery. Cross-modal registration poses a significant challenge for traditional navigation systems. Infervision leverages AI technology to transform preoperative MR images, achieving precise alignment with intraoperative CT scans and enabling real-time, high-accuracy registration.

III. Tissue displacement caused by patient respiration is a common challenge in navigation for percutaneous puncture procedures. Data indicate that the average displacement of pulmonary nodules exceeds 10 mm, significantly increasing the difficulty for physicians to perform accurate punctures. Addressing this pain point, Infervision has developed a respiration-guided system. This system records the breath-hold phase during CT acquisition, analyzes respiratory status in real time, and identifies the optimal timing for puncture, thereby eliminating the majority of interference caused by patient respiration.

IV. AI-Based Postoperative Assessment System, capable of automatically registering pre- and post-operative images to provide timely and precise evaluation of surgical outcomes upon completion of the procedure.

5. Needle-type sensors can accurately track the position of the surgical needle tip, avoiding issues such as reduced navigation accuracy or system failure caused by needle bending, thereby achieving stable, millimeter-level positioning and significantly enhancing surgical efficiency and safety.

20221218 Infervision AI Surgical Robot Completes Animal Trials

Currently, Infervision’s AI-powered surgical robot has completed phantom studies, animal experiments, and research validation trials. Experimental data disclosed by Infervision indicate that the AI-enabled surgical robot can significantly reduce the number of CT scans, cut puncture procedure time by more than 70%, maintain millimeter-level precision, and increase the puncture success rate to over 90%.

Leading preoperative planning and intraoperative navigation systems have already addressed the vast majority of current challenges in percutaneous puncture. Infervision continues to drive R&D efforts to seamlessly integrate AI into hardware, creating a comprehensive AI-powered surgical robot.

In response, Chen Kuan, Founder and Chairman of Infervision, stated: "Currently, percutaneous puncture procedures rely heavily on manual operations by physicians, demanding extensive experience and technical expertise. Under conditions of stress and fatigue, physicians may be prone to operational errors. Therefore, a surgical robot that meets clinical needs and deeply integrates AI can not only significantly enhance surgical precision and efficiency but also lower the threshold for performing such procedures, enabling more physicians to master a wider range of surgical techniques and helping to alleviate the scarcity of medical resources."

Infervision’s R&D team has now mastered automated robotic arm control technology. Coupled with the integration of preoperative planning and intraoperative navigation systems, Infervision’s AI surgical robot has established a technological advantage in both domestic and international markets.

In recent years, the surgical robotics sector has attracted a surge of enterprises. As of June 30, 2023, more than 40 surgical robot products had received regulatory review and approval; however, the vast majority of these approved products are in the fields of laparoscopy and orthopedics, resulting in intense competitive pressure.

In contrast, Infervision’s chosen track of percutaneous puncture remains in the exploratory stage. Only a few percutaneous puncture surgical robots have been approved for marketing in China, including RobioEX and MAXIO V2 developed by Perfint Healthcare, the Mona Lisa prostate biopsy robot developed by Biobot, and the Zhenjiankang puncture surgery navigation and positioning system. Consequently, the market share of domestic products remains relatively low.

Therefore, if AI-driven healthcare companies such as Infervision can provide superior surgical guidance protocols—offering physicians more precise navigation and more convenient surgical tools while ensuring minimal incisions—it may accelerate the regulatory approval of percutaneous puncture surgical robots, enabling domestic manufacturers to achieve leapfrog development in import substitution within this niche sector.

Certainly, Infervision’s capabilities are not confined to the percutaneous puncture sector. After all, the company’s core competitive advantage—its AI technology—offers strong scalability. Having completed the development of a percutaneous puncture surgical robot, Infervision can rapidly advance its product pipeline through technology transfer, gradually expanding into clinical departments such as thoracic surgery, hepatobiliary surgery, interventional radiology, and minimally invasive oncology. This strategy continuously broadens the application scope of its surgical products and redefines precision surgery scenarios across a wider range of specialties.

As the penetration rate of precision medicine continues to rise in the future, and technological advancements yield more precise and agile surgical robotic arms, surgical robots will be capable of interacting with more complex tissues and organs, thereby expanding into a broader range of clinical fields and surgical procedures.

Chen Kuan stated, “If AI in medical imaging is regarded as the AI 1.0 era, then intelligently empowered surgical robots represent a new AI 2.0 era. The value of artificial intelligence is positively correlated with the depth of its integration into medicine. As surgery advances toward ‘scarless’ and precise approaches, we can leverage intelligent technologies to empower this trend and accelerate the development of precision medicine.”

Furthermore, Infervision, which has spent two years preparing for the surgical robot market, stands to benefit from multiple overlapping environmental advantages by entering the sector at this juncture.

First, the market potential supports this field. According to Frost & Sullivan research data, the global surgical robot market size will increase from $50 billion in 2020 to $168.6 billion in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of up to 27.5%. Breaking it down by region, the top three markets for surgical robots globally are the United States (55.1%), Europe (21.4%), and China (5.1%). Infervision’s business layout covers all these regions.

Next is the shift in clinical cognition. Over the past four decades, robotic technologies have been increasingly applied in the healthcare industry. A growing number of physicians are not only widely adopting these technologies in clinical practice but also participating in research and development through medical-engineering collaboration.

It is worth noting that such involvement is not confined to product R&D; many physicians are also driving the establishment of operational and training standards for surgical robots. Consequently, the clinical adoption of surgical robots has been particularly rapid in scenarios such as preoperative planning and intraoperative navigation, making intelligent surgical robots poised to become the “standard configuration” in the era of precision medicine.

Finally, macro-level policy support. Since 2015, surgical robots have received comprehensive support from national macro- and micro-level policies. Policies such as Made in China 2025, the Three-Year Action Plan for Promoting the Development of New-Generation Artificial Intelligence Industry (2018–2020), the Implementation Opinions on Promoting the Deep Integration and Development of Advanced Manufacturing and Modern Services, the Regulations on the Supervision and Administration of Medical Devices, the 14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Medical Equipment Industry, and the Implementation Plan for the “Robot+” Application Initiative have all standardized the development of the surgical robot industry and driven rapid growth across the entire lifecycle, including research and development, market access, and commercialization.

The convergence of three environmental advantages has created a favorable competitive landscape for many surgical robotics companies, including Infervision. Driven by collaborative innovation among numerous enterprises, the era of precision surgery is rapidly approaching.

Furthermore, Infervision’s cross-industry journey has identified a new pathway for the R&D of surgical robots, applicable to both AI companies and surgical robot manufacturers. The extent to which this approach will transform the development of surgical robots remains to be seen.