Synthetic data for AI outperform real data in robot-assisted surgery

Next, they generated "synthetic" X-ray images that precisely recreated the real-world experiment. When all was said and done, the team found that the algorithm trained on the simulated data performed as well as the algorithm trained on real data. "Traditionally, models trained on synthetic data don't work well on real clinical data, but that is not the case with SyntheX," said Unberath. "Health data, especially for surgery, is a challenge where synthetic data can have a huge impact. "If you need real data from cadavers or clinics, only very few universities worldwide could do this research.