Projects medical robotics

Medical Robotics Foundation Models

Surgical world models, Open-H-Embodiment, and computer vision for robotic training workflows.

Role
Technical project lead or contributing author across medical AI projects
Collaborators
Columbia University and Northwell Health
Surgical SAM 3.1 masks of instruments and anatomy on four laparoscopic frames, five frames from the suturing world model, and twelve robot platforms from Open-H-Embodiment
Surgical SAM 3.1 masks from text prompts on held-out CholecInstanceSeg frames, and frames generated by the suturing world model. Right, robot platforms in Open-H-Embodiment, with photographs from the paper.

My medical robotics work applies computer vision and generative models to surgical training, robotic manipulation, and future foundation models for healthcare robotics.

The public work spans diffusion-based suturing world models, Open-H-Embodiment contributions, Surgical SAM 3.1 for text-prompted segmentation of instruments and anatomy, surgical phase recognition, and computer vision scoring for endoscopy training. Together, these projects show how deployed perception and generative modeling can support training, assessment, simulation, and eventually more capable medical robots.

Project details

Keywords
  • Video diffusion
  • Surgical action modeling
  • Foundation model datasets
  • Automated skill assessment
  • Surgical workflow understanding
  • Medical robotics

References

2026

  1. Open-H-Embodiment: A Large-Scale Dataset for Enabling Foundation Models in Medical Robotics
    Open-H-Embodiment: A Large-Scale Dataset for Enabling Foundation Models in Medical Robotics
    Nigel Nelson, Juo-Tung Chen, Jesse Haworth, Xinhao Chen, Lukas Zbinden, Dianye Huang, Mattia Ballo, Filippo Filicori, Mehmet Kerem Turkcan, and  others
    Apr 2026

2025

  1. Towards Suturing World Models: Learning Predictive Models for Robotic Surgical Tasks
    Towards Suturing World Models: Learning Predictive Models for Robotic Surgical Tasks
    Mehmet Kerem Turkcan, Mattia Ballo, Filippo Filicori, and Zoran Kostic
    2025