Peer-Reviewed Publication
Med Image Anal2026;115104290.September 7, 2026Journal Article
Federated Learning for surgical vision in appendicitis classification: Results of the FedSurg EndoVis 2024 challenge.
Max Kirchner1, Hanna Hoffmann2, Alexander C Jenke2, Oliver L Saldanha3, Kevin Pfeiffer4, Weam Kanjo5, Julia Alekseenko6, Claas de Boer2, Santhi Raj Kolamuri7, Lorenzo Mazza2, Nicolas Padoy6, Sophia Bano8, Annika Reinke9, Lena Maier-Hein10, Danail Stoyanov11, Jakob N Kather12, Fiona R Kolbinger13, Sebastian Bodenstedt14, Stefanie Speidel14
1Department of Translational Surgical Oncology, National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT), NCT/UCC Dresden, a partnership between DKFZ, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, TUD Dresden University of Technology, and Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), Dresden, Germany. Electronic address: max.kirchner@nct-dresden.de.
2Department of Translational Surgical Oncology, National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT), NCT/UCC Dresden, a partnership between DKFZ, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, TUD Dresden University of Technology, and Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), Dresden, Germany.
3Medical Oncology, National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT), University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany; Else Kroener Fresenius Center for Digital Health, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, TUD Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany.
4Else Kroener Fresenius Center for Digital Health, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, TUD Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany.
5Krankenhaus St. Joseph-Stift Dresden GmbH, Dresden, Germany.
6IHU Strasbourg, Institute of Image-Guided Surgery, Strasbourg, France; University of Strasbourg, CNRS, INSERM, ICube, UMR7357, Strasbourg, France.
7Dr. NTR University of Health Sciences, Vijayawada, India.
8UCL Hawkes Institute and Department of Computer Science, University College London, London, UK.
9German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) Heidelberg, Division of Intelligent Medical Systems, Heidelberg, Germany; German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) Heidelberg, Helmholtz Imaging, Heidelberg, Germany.
10German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) Heidelberg, Division of Intelligent Medical Systems, Heidelberg, Germany; German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) Heidelberg, Helmholtz Imaging, Heidelberg, Germany; National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) Heidelberg, a partnership between DKFZ and Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany; Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany; Helmholtz Information and Data Science School for Health, Heidelberg, Karlsruhe, Germany; Heidelberg University Hospital, Surgical Clinic, Surgical AI Research Group, Heidelberg, Germany.
11Digital Technologies, Medtronic, London, United Kingdom; UCL Hawkes Institute and Department of Computer Science, University College London, London, UK.
12Department of Medicine I, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, TUD Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany; Medical Oncology, National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT), University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany; Else Kroener Fresenius Center for Digital Health, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, TUD Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany.
13Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA; Department of Visceral, Thoracic and Vascular Surgery, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, TUD Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany.
14Department of Translational Surgical Oncology, National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT), NCT/UCC Dresden, a partnership between DKFZ, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, TUD Dresden University of Technology, and Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), Dresden, Germany; Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop (CeTI), TUD Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany.
Abstract
Developing generalizable surgical AI requires multi-institutional data, yet privacy constraints preclude direct data sharing, making Federated Learning (FL) a natural candidate. Its application to complex, spatiotemporal surgical video remains largely unbenchmarked. We present the FedSurg Challenge, the first international initiative dedicated to FL in surgical vision, as a proof-of-concept evalua…
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